Calling Dr Jones
by Jessie Blackwood
Summary: And its not Martha we're talking about. AU again . Dr Jones is on duty at A&E ER when the victim of shooting is brought in. Well what would your reaction be if the corpse came to life again? But there's more to Dr Jones than meets the eye...
1. Calling Doctor Jones

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of these lovely characters and I am envious of the BBC and RTD because they do. Thanks guys. No infringement intended, no toes intended to be trodden on, no disrespect intended either…**

**WARNING: Rated MA for the three S's – sex, smut and swearing. You have been warned but if you're reading the M rated stuff anyway, do you really need the warning? **

**Another very AU take on the gang, this time with Ianto as the medic… **

**_Calling Dr Jones…and it isn't Martha we're talking about here…_**

A & E on a Friday night was not Ianto Jones' idea of the ideal medical career but, after all, beggars can't be choosers. To all intents and purposes, he had returned to his native country less than six months ago having secured a junior position at St Helen's Hospital in Cardiff. He had simply come back home having had a taste of the big city and found it not to his liking. In truth though, he was fleeing from worse demons than a simple dislike of London. His life had taken a nose dive with the fall of Torchwood 1. Ianto had worked for them for two years and he was lucky to escape with his skin intact. That debacle had cost him his fiancée and his future. He had escaped by the skin of his teeth but had lost Lisa, having seen some things he would rather not have seen and others too amazing to talk about. In the long run, though, he was glad to be home. He was happy where the road signs were in two languages, the phallic symbol of a fountain in Roald Dahl Plas reflected the Welsh sky and the wind blew in off the bay carrying with it the smell of salt and rain. He had left the horrors of Torchwood 1 behind, although not forgotten, even if the powers that be had intended otherwise.

As far as he knew, no one knew he was there. There were less than 30 survivors of the terrible battle at Canary Wharf between Cybermen and Darleks that took out most of Torchwood 1's staff and HQ. He had worked to try to save some of them afterwards, but some were too far gone to be saved. Some had simply been destroyed, their transition to Cybermen too far along to reverse. The kindest thing and, as far as Ianto was concerned, the most terrible thing had been the decision to euthanase them. They were Cybermen, even if only partially completed, and Cybermen were a threat to security. He was not ashamed at his part in that action, but he was not proud of it either. Since he had been one of the few medical personnel left, it had fallen to him to carry out the order.

He did not want to be retconned afterwards but 'they' had insisted. He knew they would. However, Ianto had not spent all that time working in the medical department without learning all about retcon. The retroactive continuity drug did not have an official antidote. Yet just in case they were required to ask questions of people who had been subjected to it or (God forbid) the wrong people were retconned, the antidote had been synthesised and, if taken regularly in very small doses, could render an immunity to the drug itself.

Let them think he did not remember. But Ianto Jones was not about to forget any of it. He had no desire to live in a world subject to alien invasion without remaining fully aware of it. He wanted to be at an advantage if the worst happened. Of paramount importance, though, was the fact that he did not want to forget Lisa, his beautiful Lisa. He had administered the fatal dose of anaesthetic that had killed her. He wouldn't allow anyone else to do so. As a result, he knew he was taking a risk being in the same place as Torchwood Three but he was willing to take that chance. He was only using this as a stepping off point anyway, hoping for a better job either in private practice or abroad.

He had secured the job because he spoke Welsh and one of the senior surgeons was his uncle. It wasn't what you knew in this job, it was who you knew and Ianto had exploited that connection shamelessly. He had worked out a careful back story to cover his last few months because he could hardly admit to working for Torchwood, even if they would have believed him. He had played the system, been respectful to the right people, never complained, never been late and so far, they were satisfied with him. He kept his head down and did the work, taking extra shifts when they were short handed, always completing paperwork, forgoing a social life in favour of anonymity.

And then, just when he thought he had it cracked, fate stepped in and screwed around with it all.

"We've got a shooting coming in!" the Duty Sister called to him, coming off the phone and rushing past, heading towards the ambulance bay doors. Ianto rushed off after her. That was all they needed, the police would be everywhere, cluttering the place up and getting in the way. There were always a few, there were enough drunk and disorderly cases and road traffic accidents of a Friday night to keep the Coppers in paperwork for the rest of the week. Fielding their involvement had to be carefully choreographed though, otherwise chaos ensued.

The ambulance was just backing in as they arrived, then its doors were flung open and the gurney offloaded, green-clad medical technicians and paramedics spilling out after it. There was blood everywhere, dressings had been applied and the patient was wired to the machines sitting beside his legs on the gurney, but Ianto's mind cycled through what he knew about bullet wounds and this did not look promising. The paramedic rattled off the information he had on the patient - a 36 year old male, three through-and-throughs to the chest at close range, one lung collapsed, they had managed to get an IV into him, they had intubated - Ianto listened to the non-stop stream of information as they were hurrying the patient through to a resuscitation bay where there would be a trauma team waiting. He glanced at the unconscious man, seeing short dark hair, pale skin, dark eye lashes…

The patient began to deteriorate as they arrived, plunging them all into frenetic activity to try to stabilise him.

"BP's dropping!"

"He's going into ve-tac!"

Someone grabbed the paddles from the de-fibrillator and shouting "Clear!" before applying them. Ianto was very aware that there was no response.

"Nope, going into ve-fib, we're losing him!" somebody said. "BP still dropping!"

They tried again, still nothing.

They worked for the next ten minutes before someone finally said "Let's call it people, this one's not coming back." and everybody relaxed, standing back from the dead man. Ianto sighed, he hated losing anybody. However, blood loss, trauma, it had all conspired against them. He glanced at his watch "11.33pm" he said tiredly and the nurse wrote it down.

"Anybody with him?" he asked nobody in particular.

"I'll go see. The Police will want a word anyway…"

"Who were you?" Ianto asked gently, carefully removing the endotracheal tube from his throat. The relatives wouldn't want to see him like that. The face was handsome, mid to late thirties. Ianto peeled back an eyelid. Blue eyes. Pity, he thought. He paused as he pulled the sheet up over the face, something about the man was familiar and it slightly unnerved him. Shrugging the feeling off, he went out of the room.

"Dr Jones?"

A policeman stood there, accompanied by a police woman, both of them in fluorescent yellow tabards and body protectors. Chalk and cheese, Ianto thought, looking at them. The man was blond and significantly taller than the woman who was dark haired and green eyed. He recognised her, had met her before.

"Gwen Cooper?" he smiled and then stifled a yawn. He kept forgetting he was nearing the end of a double shift and hadn't seen his bed in more than 24 hours.

"Hello Ianto. This is PC Andy Davidson" and indicated her partner by way of introduction "The shooting victim, we have a few questions we'd like to ask you."

"He's in there." Ianto said, gesturing to the room "We called it at 11.33. Do you know who he was?"

"No formal ID has been given yet." PC Davidson answered "Is there anywhere we can go that's more private?"

Ianto took them into a side office and answered their questions as best he could and they went away satisfied. When he came back out, he saw Wendy, the nursing sister, fending off two people who were insistent on seeing the dead man.

"Are you relatives?" Ianto asked, coming to her rescue.

"I'm his fiancée!" the woman was crying. The man who was with her was smaller, forceful, not to be fobbed off.

"And I'm her brother." he said, dark eyes fierce and challenging.

"Right, look, sorry, but we need to get some details first." Ianto said tiredly "Go with Nurse Walker there and she'll fill you in. Mr…?"

"Harper"

"Right Mr Harper, Wendy will see to you both" and Ianto left Wendy, who was much better at patient liason than him, to do her stuff.

In the room, someone had dimmed the lights. Ianto moved to the dead man's side and lifted the sheet. Although there was a lot of blood soaked into his clothes, the cloying scent of it was sickly and metallic, the entry wounds had been fairly small, the visible damage minimal, the exit wounds hidden.

"Poor guy." Ianto murmured "Wrong place, wrong time.".

What happened next nearly gave him a cardiac arrest. With a great gasp of a breath, the body on the bed struggled to sit, wild-eyed and arms flailing. Acting on reflex alone Ianto grabbed the man before he could land himself on the floor and steadied him, one hand round his waist, one on his shoulder. Ianto felt the heat radiating from the man's body. To stop himself falling he grabbed at Ianto's arms with a powerful grip from a pair of large long-fingered hands. The blue glare was disorientated, fierce and altogether frightening. "Where the hell…?" the accent was oddly ordinary, he was an American.

"A&E, St Helen's" Ianto breathed "…but you're…you were…" looking down at the man's chest, Ianto also saw something he wished he hadn't. The bullet wounds had gone…

Ianto stood there in shock as the man looked at him, assessing him with those dark blue eyes of his. He was rapidly regaining his equilibrium which is more than Ianto could say of himself. Ianto's first assessment of him had been right, he was very handsome. A gamut of emotions rushed through Ianto as he stood there, then a mass of questions.

"There's people here to see you…?" was all he could say, then he realised he was talking to a dead man, some part of his mind tried to tell him. Oh God, was he having a nervous breakdown?

"Good, my team probably."

"Your…team…?" Ianto suddenly came to his senses, the whole bizarre incident coming into clear focus "How the hell are you alive?" he almost screamed "What team, who are you!?"

"Shh, I'm sorry about this." The man said, capturing one of Ianto's hands and squeezing it comfortingly "I'm Captain Jack Harkness, I run Torchwood 3. Who are you?"

Oh My God! That's why his face was familiar! "Jones, Ianto Jones…" he murmured weakly, too shocked to invent a false name.

"Well, Jones Ianto Jones, nice to meet you," He smiled, flashing teeth "but I have somewhere to be." He got off the gurney just as the door opened and the woman who had claimed to be his fiancée and the young man who said he was her brother came into the room.

"Owen, Suzie, meet Ianto Jones." Harkness said, watching as the others nodded to him. "Owen, clothes?" and the man threw a bag at him. He retrieved a clean shirt and put it on. "Go get the car and I'll meet you out back." Jack said as he pulled out a jacket out, stuffed his bloodstained shirt into the bag and threw it back at Owen.

"The Police are outside." Suzie said.

"I'll get round that." He said confidently, shoving his arms into the jacket and shrugging it on. He patted the pockets, found what he was looking for. "Go with Owen." he added pointedly "Gimme five, I'll see you round the back." and he watched as they left. Then he turned to Ianto and smiled a little sadly "Sorry you had to see this." he said, flashing a charming smile, showing impossibly white teeth as he did so. "You're a good looking man Ianto Jones, pity we didn't meet under different circumstances." he moved quickly then, pressing his lips to Ianto's in a searching kiss. With a gasp at the unexpectedness of it, Ianto found himself responding, opening his mouth, moaning into it. It had been too long since Lisa, since Canary Wharf… Jack stood back, deftly pressed a small bottle to his lips and tipped it "Drink!" he ordered and the stuff flooded across Ianto's tongue and down his throat. He swallowed convulsively and the brandy burned a fiery trail down to his stomach. He also recognised the slightly bitter aftertaste. Retcon. Ah well, you couldn't blame him. Jack captured his face in those hands of his and their eyes locked.

"You never saw me." Jack said gently, an arm around Ianto's waist, supporting him. "There was no shooting tonight, just an accident. Some guy impaled on a metal spike, chest wound, complications, died on the table. You tried, but there was nothing could be done. Lost too much blood. Not your fault." Ianto filed that away for future reference. Jack was at pains to reassure him that non of it was his fault. He was obscurely touched by the gesture. As the drug took effect, making his eyes sag closed, Jack lowered him gently to the floor. "Sorry Ianto." he said, with a regretful wistfulness "Maybe I'll see you round." then he hit the call button, walking casually away as a nurse hurried towards the room.

**o0o0o0o0o0oo**

Ianto woke in a hospital bed. Disorientated, he lay there for a moment, trying to sort his thoughts.

"You're awake at last, how are you feeling?" Doctor Macintosh was looking him over critically "Can you remember what happened?"

"Not a thing" Ianto lied. Actually he remembered it all, he was just expected not to.

"You collapsed. At least, Nurse Harding found you on the floor in A&E, unconscious. Damn good job you didn't hit your head on the way down. We've done the blood work on you, nothing at all. You're clean."

"What did you expect Michael, drugs?"

"Wouldn't be the first time someone's tried. No, I think its probably exhaustion. Everybody has been saying you've been pushing yourself, taking extra shifts. You need to take care Mr Jones. You can't burn the candle!" he frowned "You're staying right where you are for now. Get better, and that's an order."

Ianto had been signed off for a week, told to go home and rest, then abandoned to his fate. Nobody really cared if he lived or died, but he couldn't blame them for that. He hadn't gone out of his way to make friends. This was a transient post, a stepping off point, and he was determined not to put down roots. His flat was spartan, his stuff still boxed up and in store, apart from his DVDs and the wide screen television, his few favourite books and, of course, his coffee machine. One thing he could not live without was decent coffee.

He sprawled on the couch watching the morning news and wondered at where his life was going. Not far at this rate. He figured he would get on the internet later and check the job postings. He might fancy some back-of-beyond clinic in Kashmir or Kenya…scratch Kenya, he didn't fancy carrying a gun, even though Torchwood had taught him how to use one.

He kept going back to Jack Harkness, asking himself if there was any way they could have missed anything, but he kept getting the same answer – no. The man had been dead, everybody on the trauma team had concurred. He had heard of Torchwood 3's charismatic leader, everybody had, even seen him once at a distance on one of his infrequent visits to Torchwood London. It was common knowledge he did not get along with Yvonne Hartman, Torchwood 1's boss. There were other rumours too, the fact that the man was a terrible flirt and would bed anything with a pulse. And he had kissed him! Ianto could still feel it, if he concentrated, the pressure of those lips on his. It had been a shock tactic, nothing more, designed to take him off balance so the retcon could be delivered with minimum fuss. No use reading anything into it, but…he had told him he was good looking, so Jack found him attractive, and that had sounded genuine. What was genuine was the way he had taken care to reassure Ianto that the 'accident victim' died due to complications and that he had not been at fault. The man had a conscience at least, a streak of kindness in him.

Ianto missed Lisa, sometimes achingly so, but he had long ago come to terms with his variable sexuality. He had finally understood that he was bisexual, not bi-curious as someone had accused him of being. He found himself attracted to both sexes and, what's more, he enjoyed it. He decided to live dangerously and try a gay bar later, look for someone to spend the evening with and possibly get himself shagged senseless. Man or woman, didn't matter.

Owen had efficiently dealt with the records, doctored (he had sniggered at the pun) the hospital and police records and 'lost' Jack's body somewhere in the system. The 'shooting' never happened. Jack was concerned though, the fact that he had managed to get so badly damaged this time round. If it had been one of the others… He was bothered by the fact that they had no doctor on the staff, just Owen, who was good with computers but little else, Toshiko who was a wonder with the archives and working out what the alien tech did that they harvested from the rift, and Suzie, who was, like Tosh, a scientist, an investigator. Jack wondered for the millionth time if they shouldn't get more people. They were stressed as it was and breaking point wouldn't be far away at this rate.

Over the next few days though, Jack found his thoughts straying back to the good looking young doctor he had retconned, he found himself wishing he had met him under different circumstances and fantasised about what they might have got up to. It crossed his mind once or twice whether to offer him a job, he had definitely taken Jack's return to life quite well, even though he had been shocked. He had definitely responded to that kiss, surprisingly so. That had been…nice, actually. OK, not so much of a shock as he had intended but what the hell. He couldn't forget his eyes, so blue and…sad, was that it? There was a sadness, a weariness about them, which was not, if Jack was any judge, anything to do with being overworked and under paid.

That evening Ianto dressed up, picking out a particularly well-fitted dark pinstripe suit and purple shirt to complement it. He felt surprisingly good actually. Time to enjoy himself a little. He kept thinking back to Jack Harkness though, the man's charisma was off the scale. He shivered and headed for Maxi's, the gay club across town.

Jack packed the others off home, then showered and changed, deciding to go find a date somewhere. He would take someone home, be asked in for coffee, maybe get lucky. His thoughts kept going back to the young doctor though. Ianto, such a very _'Welsh'_ name. With his dark good looks and blue eyed stare, to Jack he was the epitome of whatever it was that he thought of as 'Welshness'. Couple that with the accent, those beautiful vowels flowing from the young man's lips with such a musical lilt and the whole effect had been amazingly erotic.

Ianto was on his second pint when he saw the door open to admit a tall man and an accompanying gust of rain-soaked wind. Ianto had been approached twice that evening, although neither man had peeked his interest. He had feigned waiting for a date and put them off. He watched the newcomer arrive, his period military great coat swinging round his legs as he strode to the bar. The dark hair was slightly spiky, the blue eyes sharp and observant…Ianto hurriedly turned away. Damn it! It was him! Of all the places… He turned, composing his face to blankness. Harkness could not be allowed to realise that the retcon had not worked. What was he doing, stalking him to see if it had worked?

Ianto's gaze travelled over the man, ignoring him, although he knew he had been seen. He watched the door, deliberately checked his watch and sighed, for all the world looking as though his date hadn't appeared. Over the next couple of minutes he finished the pint, checked his watch again and glanced at the door one last time. Easy does it, make it look like you're leaving because your date didn't show…

Jack had made a last minute decision to go to Maxi's. His preference had taken a swing towards his own sex that evening and Maxi's had yielded good results before. He drew a couple of admiring looks as he entered but he was at the bar and ordering his drink before he spotted the young man. Damn it all, his luck was in. Ianto Jones, large as life and twice as attractive as he remembered. He was definitely dressed to impress but there was something subtly different about him…more confident, less tired. He watched as Ianto checked his watch and glanced at the door. Damn it, he was waiting for someone. Jack stepped a little closer, deliberately wanting to see if there was any recognition in those eyes. As he watched, Ianto's gaze swept over him without apparent recollection and he looked at the door again. In that moment Jack decided that if the date showed up he would personally show him the door. He moved purposefully towards where Ianto was sitting.

"Stood you up, did she?" asked the voice beside him. There was a hint of good humour in the tone and Ianto looked up innocently, staring into the blue eyes gazing intently down at him, matching them gaze for gaze. Jack blinked first.

"Er..no, actually." Ianto said carefully "_He_ stood me up, over an hour late…I don't know why I wait for him." Ianto paused, assessing the man who stood over him. "Do I know you?"

"Don't think I've had the pleasure, I'm sure I would have remembered." He stuck out his hand "Jack Harkness" Ianto took the offered hand and shook it.

"Ianto Jones." He smiled, making a spot decision "I was about to head off home…"

"Aw, wouldn't that would be a waste of a good evening?" Jack said, encouragingly. "Why don't I join you and we can see if there's something worth salvaging?"

Ianto looked at the half-finished pint in Jack's hand "What are you drinking?"

"Thanks, I'll have another beer."

He watched as Ianto rose from his seat and went to the bar. The rear view was worth watching. Front view was even better, Jack thought as the man returned and took a seat opposite, placing a frothing pint in front of him.

"Thanks. So, you were waiting for the boyfriend?"

"Not any more." Ianto's voice was grim.

"Ouch. Sorry."

"Don't be. I'm better out of it."

"You need me to teach him a lesson?"

Ianto laughed. Jack smiled, showing teeth. Ianto's laugh was gorgeous, like the rest of him, Jack found himself thinking. Their eyes met and Jack's smile faded. Ianto was looking at him with an unreadable expression.

"So" the younger man said, breaking the moment. "What do you do Jack?"

"Do?"

"For a living, you know?"

"Oh, I see. Security Consultant. You?"

"Doctor."

"Wow." Jack laughed. "Impressive."

Ianto had to admire the man's acting skills. He smiled "Always does that to people. Its nothing special, really. I'm just a junior A&E doctor, overworked, under paid, no social life."

"How come you escaped tonight?"

"Off work."

"You've been ill?" As if, Ianto thought, you didn't know…

"Nothing catching, don't worry. I was just over-tired. I'm OK now though."

Jack looked concerned "You sure?" he didn't sound convinced.

"Really, I'm fine. Just needed a distraction this evening, which hasn't turned up. I'm going nuts at home. There's only so many times you can watch Little Britain."

"Hasn't the boyfriend been looking after you?"

Ianto awarded him with a look that was calculated to say it all "As I said, I'm better out of it. Didn't even visit me in hospital."

"Sounds like you need someone to take care of you."

"Chance would be a fine thing." Ianto muttered, then belatedly realised Jack had fed him the perfect line "Why, are you offering?" he smiled, turning on the charm. Jack Harkness wasn't the only one who could captivate his audience…

"Doctors usually make bad patients" Jack commented cheekily. "They don't do as they're told."

"Well, I promise to be good." Not the only one who can flirt either, ball's in your court Harkness…

"Your place or mine?" well, that was coming straight to the point.

"Mine, its probably closer. Its only about two minutes walk away and…I could make you breakfast. I'll warn you, people say my coffee is addictive."

"That's an offer I would be stupid to refuse." Jack rose from the chair and extended a hand. Ianto took it and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. Jack was gratified to note that their eyes were on a level.

They walked the short distance to Ianto's flat with barely a word between them. Ianto couldn't believe he had agreed to this. He was living dangerously, unsure whether this was some kind of bizarre test and Jack already knew who he was. If he didn't, Ianto wondered why he had come over, unless simply to satisfy himself that the retcon had worked. If that was the case, why had he pursued it this far? He could have talked and then left him alone. He had chosen to take things further. Well, Ianto had no one to blame but himself after all. He had decided to go out on the pull, just hadn't imagined for one minute he would pull the much sought-after leader of Torchwood 3, the legendary Jack Harkness. Damn it, he had to pretend he didn't know who the hell he was. He was an ordinary, if good looking, guy on the pull, just like himself.

Once through the door, Jack did not waste time. He wanted a repeat of that kiss, even although he knew Ianto would not remember it. He pushed him against the wall, uncertain how rough he could be, certain he wanted to be forceful enough to make his point. Ianto's eyes were lustfully fixed on his, his mouth slightly open, breath coming in short gasps. Jack loosened Ianto's tie, leaned in and pressed his lips to the young man's eager mouth. Their tongues battled for dominance of the kiss before Ianto gave way and allowed Jack to explore his mouth, allowing the man to thrust his tongue deeply in, moaning round it. Hands roamed, popping buttons open, sliding under cloth and touching hard hot skin beneath. Fingers raked through short hair, slid round and down to touch pebbled nipples and on to grab hips and pull them close. Jack ground his hips into Ianto's and Ianto responded by grabbing his arse and pulling him even closer. Clothes were discarded and left where they fell, forming a trail to the bedroom. Ianto broke away long enough to find the supplies in the drawer of the bedside table, wordlessly pressing the condom into Jack's hand.

Jack grinned "You want it that way round then?" he murmured huskily into Ianto's neck.

Ianto nodded "Do you mind?"

"Mind? Hell, no. I like it that way round."

"Good…" Ianto took a deep breath but Jack was no fool.

"I'm not your first, am I?"

"Well, not exactly…but we didn't…"

"So I am your first?"

Ianto laughed "Its that obvious?"

"Well, you're a little nervous."

"Damn, thought I was hiding it well…"

"Ianto…no need to worry. I'm flattered you chose me. I'll try not to disappoint you."

"You could never do that Jack."

"You don't know me very well…" he gave a slightly sarcastic smile.

Ianto captured Jack's mouth in another kiss, but this time, Jack was the one to capitulate and moan into it, Ianto's hands finding interesting things to do further south. He slid to his knees on the floor and looked up at Jack standing there, anticipation trembling through both of them. Jack's hands threaded through his hair as Ianto's mouth swallowed him whole, his breath coming in little grunts, hips pushing forwards. Ianto's warm hands gripped his hips, his eyes were closed.

Suddenly, Jack pulled back, breaking the hold. He dragged Ianto roughly to his feet and turned him, pushing him down to the bed. Ianto nearly stopped breathing as he felt Jack's slick fingers preparing the way, an intimate invasion he was powerless to stop. The older man's weight shifted and he felt the press of hot flesh to his own. "Take a deep breath and relax" Jack murmured, his voice husky and gentle, hands roaming across Ianto's back. Obediently, Ianto drew breath and Jack pushed, sliding in. Pain blossomed up his spine but he didn't care. He groaned as Jack's thrusts rode him past the pain, bumping against the sensitive prostate, sending a multitude of sensations through his body. Ianto thrust himself back against Jack's thrusts, taking him deeper still. Jack obliged, finding his rhythm, rocking against Ianto's body. A hand took hold of Ianto's cock and pumped it in time to the thrusting rhythm. Non of it took very long. Shuddering, Ianto spilled into Jack's hand, growling with the blossoming pleasure as Jack's hips suddenly snapped forward, once, twice, three times, as he emptied himself into the willing embrace of Ianto's body.

Afterwards, Jack was surprised to see, Ianto liked to cuddle. He lay in Jack's arms, embraced, warm and strangely secure, given the present company.

"That was good" he mumbled against Jack's chest.

"Did you mean it about making me breakfast, I should tell you I go to work rather early."

"No, I meant it…" Ianto suddenly lifted his head and looked at him "Was this a one night stand or…" he looked closely at the man. Hells Bells, what was he asking? Why was he asking?

Jack's expression softened "Not necessarily" he said "Can I see you again?"

"Yes, yes, you can…if you want."

"Good, get some sleep. I'll wake you in time."

Jack spent the time that he didn't sleep prowling round the man's flat, surprised to see how transient it seemed. Looked for all the world as though Ianto wasn't attempting to put down roots. There were boxes in the second bedroom that had not yet been unpacked, furniture that hadn't been unwrapped. He surveyed the DVD collection with amusement. The guy was a born romantic. A single DVD that was obviously computer generated sat on the top of the pile next to the television. Video's probably, Jack thought, it was marked 'Lisa' in black pen. It had obviously been recently viewed as the case was open.

Curiosity got the better of him and he turned the television on, muted the sound, then slid the DVD into the slot and pressed play. There was a short pause and then a lively dark skinned girl danced into view, carrying a picnic basket. Jack sat as if pole-axed. He knew her. She was laughing and Jack risked turning up the sound. They were talking and joking about inconsequential stuff, then the camcorder was handed over to her and Ianto hove into view, pretending to be the butler with a tea towel over his arm, serving her. Then he got down on one knee and presented her with a small box, opening it to reveal a ring. "For the record I'm asking Lisa to marry me" he said happily and caught the camcorder as, with a squeal of delight, she almost dropped it. The camcorder turned on her as Ianto took it back and he fumbled the ring onto her finger one handed, while she danced around and he continued to video the moment. She pushed her hand almost into the lens so the ring could be recorded too. A sapphire, as blue as Ianto's eyes. Jack remembered that ring, he had seen it on his last visit, commented on who had beaten him to it. She had laughed and told him she was engaged to - Jack groaned - one of the doctors. The video stopped suddenly and was replaced with a brief wobbly video of the two of them, heads together, the camcorder held at arms length and facing them both, as they pulled faces. "I love Ianto Jones!" Lisa cried, throwing her arms round him and joggling the camcorder again. Then it jumped to an evening scene, London, looking out at the river. Lisa was talking about giving up work at Torchwood and having babies. Ianto's voice telling her it was recorded and she couldn't on back on it now. Then it stopped. Jack slipped the DVD out and replaced it in its cover.

Ianto woke slowly, aware that the bed was cold. Jack had gone. He padded to the bathroom but in so doing realised he had been abandoned. Jack had really gone. It disappointed him but he wasn't altogether surprised. So much for asking about breakfast. He showered, dressed and went to the local shop for a paper and a bottle of milk before returning. He noticed a large black SUV outside but thought nothing of it until he got back to his flat to find Jack standing there, waiting.

"Jack?" Ianto was uncertain.

"Can I come in?

"Of course…I missed you this morning. Was going to cook breakfast."

"Something came up…" he shrugged. Ianto unlocked the door and led the way inside "Coffee?" he asked and saw the answering nod.

"So, what can I do for you?"

"Ianto Gareth Jones, 26 years old, worked for Torchwood 1, engaged to Lisa Hallett, 2006. Need I go on?"

Damn. Ianto hung his head. "How did you find out?"

"Your DVD of your engagement, I happened to find it last night, on the top of the pile, open. I figure you must watch it regularly."

"You were going through my stuff?" Ianto was ruffled.

"Yeah, well, I was curious. Always am when I meet someone I like. In my line of work it pays to be careful. Lisa was one of the PR people I met every time I visited London. I remembered her face, I remember the ring you gave her. On the DVD she talks about Torchwood. So I looked you up on the database, found your record."

"Ah"

"I find it a little coincidental you being here on our doorstep. I also know you were retconned after Canary Wharf, and I did the same thing after you saw me that night at the hospital. So how come it didn't affect you?"

"How do you know it didn't?"

"Because you're talking to me, not freaking out and asking me what the hell I'm talking about" Jack sighed "To me, that's a good indication"

"I don't know why"

"Liar"

"Jack…"

"Ianto, nobody is immune"

"Stands to reason somebody might be"

"And you'd know…"

"I'm a doctor, I might have the edge on you concerning this one"

Jack paused. He had to concede that one. However, he still didn't believe the man.

"So Ianto, what am I going to do with you?" There was suddenly a very hard edge to his voice. Jack was back to being the leader of Torchwood 3, in fact, after the Canary Wharf battle, he was probably leader of Torchwood itself. Ianto looked at the man, suddenly uncertain of him. What would he do himself, presented with secrets that needed to be kept, a man who wasn't affected by retcon and who was, at that point, a loose canon? He realised Jack was on duty, he had come back armed, he wore a holster at his hip. Ianto watched as Jack's hand dropped to rest on the leather. Oh God, the man was going to shoot him. He broke out in a cold sweat, he was frozen to the spot. His body was screaming at him to run but the cold logical part of him knew he wouldn't reach the door. And this was Torchwood, they could and would make it look like a murder.

"Do I get a last request?" he said softly.

A fleeting look crossed Jack's face, then his gaze hardened and he looked into Ianto's eyes.

"I still want to know how?" he asked again.

"Antidote" Ianto said flatly.

"There isn't one"

"Not now there isn't. There used to be though. Taken in sufficient dose every day, you build an immunity. They didn't know that. I also didn't know how long it would last." Jack was looking at him strangely. "They didn't tell you that one, did they? You didn't know there was an antidote?"

"Who else knew?"

"What about? The antidote or the immunity?" Ianto asked "They didn't know about the immunity. I tried that myself. The antidote was only known to a select few. Don't misunderstand, I wasn't one of those, but my Supervisor was. I heard him talking to Hartman one morning about it. I was a researcher as well as medic, I got into the stores and retrieved some, wrote it up as having been dropped and destroyed. I copied the signature of one of the staff who had just been, conveniently, dismissed and retconned herself. Untraceable, neat and tidy. I knew I was breaking the contract, but frankly, I didn't care. I didn't want to lose my memory. Hells bells, we live in a world subject to alien invasion! Do you think, knowing what I know, I wanted to lose that? I'd be just like everybody else, lambs to the slaughter if anything kicked off. And if you think I wanted to lose my memory of the woman I loved so much, you've got another thing coming."

"You wouldn't remember, so it wouldn't matter." Jack pointed out reasonably.

"Like you would know…" Ianto walked into the kitchen, switched on the coffee machine "Would you like one?"

"Yeah, sure."

"I'm going to have a coffee, then I'm going to lie down. I suggest…you do it then. I don't blame you, I forgive you, you're only protecting Torchwood after all. Above the Government, beyond the police and all that crap" he smiled, sadly. "My world collapsed after Canary Wharf, when she died. I was one of the last of the medics left alive so they asked me to do it. There were six partially-converted people, Lisa included. They asked me to…to put them to sleep…" he stared into the distance, unfocussed "It was humane, they were too far gone to bring back, nobody knew how anyway. They were too dangerous to leave alive."

"What did you do?"

"Just flooded them with pentothal, followed with a paralytic and potassium."

"Lethal injection?"

"Unconsciousness, followed by paralysis and cardiac arrest. Painless."

"But Ianto, you're a doctor, you cure people, you don't kill them. You really want to remember what you did?"

Ianto smiled "Because I am a doctor. In case I'm ever tempted to play God. I had to, Jack, they would have done it anyway, they would have shot them if I hadn't said yes. Lisa was one of them. What could I do? I owed her that much." He finished making the coffee and handed a mug over to Jack. The man sipped and paused, marvelling at the taste.

"Where did you learn to make such great coffee?" he asked. "you might be right about it being addictive."

"Was a Barista one summer, worked my way through college." He smiled "never forgot how to make it but it's the beans that are important. Shouldn't be roasted too much"

Jack watched him as he went through to the bedroom. He sipped his coffee and thought hard. He really couldn't do this, could he? He couldn't shoot Ianto, not in cold blood. But it wouldn't be, would it? He was a threat as outlined in the Torchwood Handbook, not subject to memory wipe and, as such, would remain an uncontrolled risk. Jack sighed, tugging on the holster at his waist. Sometimes he hated the job. He hated the way it made him feel, hated what it made him do. He took out the Webley and felt it fit into his palm, curled his fingers round the familiar grip and felt the weight in his hand.

Jack straightened his shoulders and marched to the bedroom. Ianto was lying on his side in bed, his face set in a serene smile. He had taken his clothes off and pulled the fleece blanket over himself, snuggled into its warmth and comfort. Jack brought his gun up, imagined the bullet crashing through Ianto's skull, wiping the memories, solving all their problems in one drastic swoop. He could see the blue eyes dulled, that vital body lax and unresponsive in death. Just another unsolved murder for the police to investigate. Simple, Bloody Torchwood strikes again. He walked to the edge of the bed near Ianto's head.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o**

Ianto roused from a deep sleep, wondering why the lights were on. A side lamp was on next to the bed and he could smell…coffee? He turned to see steam rising from a mug on the night stand. Memory came crashing back, he had not expected to wake up.

"Hey" Jack stood in the doorway, mug in hand "Sorry, its probably not as good as yours but I thought you might want one"

Ianto sat up, the blanket dropping from his bare chest "Why am I still alive?" he asked warily "Are you still going to shoot me?"

"Nope, I have another idea"

"You've poisoned the coffee?"

Jack laughed at that, a full blown belly laugh which made Ianto smile too. "No, its not poisoned…not a bad idea though…" he wiped his eyes and sobered, took a deep breath and said quickly "Come work for me. Join Torchwood 3 as our medic. We need someone like you, we're quick to get beaten up and mauled but we've nobody to patch us up. What do you say? Would solve all my problems."

"All your problems? What about me? I think I might prefer a bullet through the brain to working for Torchwood again!"

It was obvious Jack hadn't considered that angle "Look, I can't! I can't shoot you, OK?" he was angry, probably with himself. "Don't think I couldn't call somebody up and get someone else to do it" he glared at Ianto as he said it as if daring him to challenge it and Ianto nodded.

"I believe you."

"Good. But I wish you'd consider it. I need a doctor, someone who doesn't cringe when I come back to life, someone for whom aliens are second nature, someone who can patch everyone up without asking awkward questions. I need somebody I can shag senseless and who can fuck me until I can't remember my own name! _Ianto, I need you!_" He watched the blue eyes regarding him over the rim of the mug. Then Ianto put down the mug and threw back the bedclothes in silent invitation.

"OK" he sighed.

"What?"

"I said OK. I'll do it, OK? I must be mad…" he shook his head in exasperation. Jack quickly shed his clothes and slid into bed, his body fitting alongside Ianto's, taking the young man in his arms "I'll make it worth your while, I promise" he murmured in Ianto's ear, his lips grazing the earlobe and making him shiver.

"You'd better!" Ianto said "And I'm nobody's part time shag, you got that? I work for you, I work for you, when we're at work we act professionally, OK?"

"OK" Jack agreed.

"You and me, we see where this goes. Commitment time Harkness, if you're with me, you're with me, no nipping off to get laid by any Tom, Dick or Harry - you got that? Or ET either, come to that"

"Be happy to" Jack grinned at him, eyes fixed on Ianto's.

"Good, you can start now"

"The pleasure is all mine" Jack said, hands roaming over Ianto's warm skin.

"It had better not be" Ianto countered and Jack laughed, his mouth fastening over Ianto's in a deep kiss.

_Fin. _

_There may be a sequel, not sure yet. Alert it in case, if you wish. Chapters shall be added to this one. Btw, this is the reason the other stories haven't been updated yet, sorry… please review_


	2. The Doctor Is In

**Disclaimer: if you recognise it, I don't own it, no infringement intended….**

**Warning: MA, for adult themes, slash and swearing (Blame it on Owen, what do you expect?)**

_**The Doctor is in…**_

Monday morning began early as usual, Owen arrived first (Jack was already there, as usual) closely followed by Tosh and Suzie who were laughing together at some joke or other. Owen scooted up to make coffee for everybody and the others went to their respective works stations to begin the week's work. Jack appeared at the top of the steps to his office and called "Morning, I have something to tell you guys. Where's Owen?"

"Here Boss" Owen said, presenting him with a mug of coffee and a grin.

"Good weekend? You sound chipper."

"Yeah, you might say" but he wouldn't be drawn further on the matter.

"You said you had something to tell us?" Suzie reminded, drawing Jack back on track.

"Oh, yeah. Well, I've been thinking that we've been understaffed for a while now so I went out and got us a new medic, somebody to take care of us."

"You make it sound like you went shopping and bought us one" Tosh grinned.

Owen looked somewhat shocked and Suzie clapped her hands gleefully.

"Great Jack, when do we get to meet this amazingly tolerant and talented person?"

"You've met him" Jack watched the puzzlement on their faces "Well, Owen and Suzie have" he grinned "Remember the doctor at the hospital?"

"Oh, the cute one who looked like he was about to collapse?" Suzie said.

"Yeah, him. I offered him a job. He's starting this morning."

"Oh my God, he was wet behind the ears…" Owen muttered, but Suzie cut him off.

"He was sweet" she said "and good looking" she added "But that's probably why Jack chose him, a little eye candy never hurt anyone."

"I might make an exception" Ianto said, coming up the stairs from the autopsy room "Call me that again and I'll personally make sure I use the biggest needle I can lay hands on for all your shots" but he was smiling, Suzie was relieved to see. She blushed and looked at the floor while Jack laughed appreciatively. "You're Suzie, right?" Ianto said and held out a hand.

She shook it and said "I'm sorry, but Jack…"

"I know. Its OK." He replied "Actually, I'm flattered you think I make the grade."

She giggled a very un-suzie-like giggle and went back to her work station, watching him as Tosh came forward.

"Toshiko Sato" She said and stuck her hand out "People call me Tosh."

"Toshiko, pleased to meet you." Ianto took her hand and shook it, then bowed a little formal Japanese bow. She smiled and bowed back, just the right amount.

Then it was Owen's turn "Owen Harper" he said "I'm the IT man and coffee boy."

"You were with Suzie at the hospital" Ianto said, shaking his hand "Nice to meet you too, glad its under better circumstances."

"Yeah, yeah, well, welcome to Torchwood, such as it is. Hope you…fit in" he said, struggling for words.

"Thanks, I'll do my best."

"Turns out Ianto worked for Torchwood 1, so he knows the ropes. Make him welcome won't you" Jack said, unable to miss their surprise at that little revelation.

"You survived Torchwood 1?" Tosh was awed.

"How the hell did you end up here?" Suzie said "In Cardiff of all places?"

"Got a job at St Helen's in A&E, my uncle is on the surgical staff and I speak Welsh. I'm from Newport, down the road" Ianto volunteered. "This is my home country."

"I pity you!" Owen said, his accent unmistakably that of a Londoner.

"Ianto, a word if you will" Jack called, rescuing him, and Ianto nodded and climbed the stairs to the office.

"I want you to give them all a complete physical, get something on paper, start their records." Jack said as ianto shut the door behind him.

"They haven't got any?"

"Nope, we've not had a doctor since Chad White committed suicide in 2002."

"Chad White?"

"Your predecessor. Jumped off a tower block. Had a nervous breakdown, nothing anybody could do, we didn't know." Jack gulped his coffee.

"Careful, you'll give yourself indigestion" Ianto murmured absently "So, looks like I have a lot to live up to."

Jack laughed "Well, hopefully it won't come to that. Settle in first, get yourself orientated, have a look at the equipment. You can ask Tosh if there's anything you can't fathom. We've got a Bekaran deep tissue scanner in there, does a better job than a normal scanner. There's the singularity scalpel too, ask her to show you those. If anything is lacking, make me a list and cost it if you can, we'll see about updating supplies as soon as we can."

"There is something I'd like to do while I'm here."

"Which is?"

"Take blood from all of you."

Jack thought for a moment, then put his head on one side "Enlighten me."

"Simple really, in case anybody requires a transfusion."

"That's doubtful in my case."

"But not the others. They're altogether too human. If I take some every couple of months or so, hopefully we should build up a stock before you really need it. If everybody's is kept labelled and separate, its there for emergencies."

"Good call. I'll put it to them."

"And I'd like permission to study your blood too."

"Mine? Why?"

"Well, if that little display at the hospital was anything to go by, you've done it before. You came back as though you were used to it. So you can't die, or rather you keep coming back. I don't know what your blood group is either or if it might affect anyone who is given it in transfusion."

"Woah there…I don't think that is a good idea."

"Why not? Think about it. You're a perfect source, you're definitely not ill, you heal quickly, you'd regenerate the lost blood very quickly…"

"Ianto, I really don't think…"

"Jack, at least let me find out what blood group you are?"

"You don't give up easy, do you?"

"I'm a doctor, what do you expect?" Ianto grinned "Look, all I'm saying is, would it not be useful for me to investigate? Even if it imparted healing qualities, wouldn't it be worth it?"

"Let me think about it."

"Of course Sir."

"There's no need to call me Sir, Ianto."

"Seemed like a good idea at the time." He smiled.

"Ianto, you up for dinner tonight?" Jack shrugged "I thought dinner, maybe a movie…"

"You're asking me out on a date?"

"Yeah, guess so…"

Ianto sighed "I'm not sure…Look Jack, when I said I didn't want to be anybody's part-time shag, when I mentioned I would need commitment from you, I didn't mean to imply I wanted to rush into things…"

"I see."

"Do you? Look, its only been six months since Lisa died. I loved her, very much." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly "You and me, wonderful, got no problems with it, great, just what I needed, but…" he paused "..don't let's go too fast, OK? I'm on the rebound, I know I am. I don't want to make decisions based on that, I don't want to hurt you, or compromise our relationship, either private or working…"

Jack smiled "OK, I understand. So, how about it then, dinner, movie, bed?" Ianto just looked at him "OK, so you're on the rebound, so what? You can still enjoy yourself, can't you?"

Ianto shook his head in exasperation "I can see its going to be interesting, working for you, _Sir_" he said and sauntered out of the office with Jack's laughter ringing in his ears.

**o0o0o0o0o0o**

"Owen, take your shirt off and hop up here please" Ianto patted the examination couch and stood back to let the man sit down. "Any concerns?" he asked.

Owen shook his head "Nope"

"Right then, take some deep breaths for me" he said, applying the stethoscope.

He ran through the examination quickly "You seem to be in good shape, do you exercise?"

"What do you think? This is bloody Torchwood, we get enough on missions" he laughed.

"Yes, well, that's intermittent at best, anything more regular?"

"No, we don't have the time."

"Might talk to Jack about that."

"What, time or exercise?"

"Both" the two men laughed and Ianto indicated Owen was done. He jumped down and put his shirt back on. "I'm going to call everyone back when I figure this scanner out , get a scan of everyone for the record. That OK?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Could you send Tosh in when you get up there?"

"Sure, no problem" and Owen took off up the stairs two at a time.

Tosh was shy and talked too much to cover it but she answered his questions and submitted to the exam without complaint. He liked Tosh, she was pretty and made an effort to get to know him. Suzie flirted, shamelessly, only too glad to shed her blouse and submit to the doctor's attentions. Ianto ignored it all, wittily making some quip about harassment when she told him he looked good in a suit.

When Tosh and Suzie were both done, Ianto went up to Jack's office, stethoscope dangling round his neck.

"Right, you next" he said, standing in the doorway.

"Don't need it."

"I beg to differ."

"Ianto, I come back to life."

"I'd noticed."

"When I do, everything is fine, factory settings, no problems. Why would you need a file on me?"

"Makes you look human."

"I am human. Just…not from round here."

Ianto rolled his eyes "No, I meant, it makes you look normal. Sorry, wrong choice of words" he sighed "Look, it'll look suspicious to UNIT or to any Government folks if your staff have medical records and you don't and all I meant was that if anyone else ever got hold of it, you'd look totally normal. You know, lets not give too much away here? Oh by the way, the boss of Torchwood 3 is a regenerating humanoid from the planet Zog!"

"New Earth actually, but that's too much information, even for you to know. Make something up then if it'll make you happy." Jack said "I can actually see the logic in your argument, might put an enemy off the scent, but I haven't needed medical records for over 100 years, don't see why I have to start now. And why would you need to examine me? I'm a normal red blooded 36 year old male, BP is normal, no infections, no imperfections…hell, I'm perfect!"

Ianto just stood there, regarding him "OK, but it would have been…" he smiled "…a nice distraction?" Jack's head came up, his eyes searching Ianto's. "But if you're too busy I understand" Ianto went to the door "After all, I believe I said I would only act professionally towards you while we were at work…"

It took a moment for Ianto's words to sink in and by that time, he had gone, disappearing down the stairs and back into the autopsy bay.

**0o0o0o0o0**

"Ianto" Jack was leaning on the barrier rail that lead around the steps to the room's entrance, looking down at Ianto as he sorted through drawers.

"Jack."

"I reconsidered."

"You did?"

Owen appeared "Coffee run" he explained.

Jack nodded. "The usual thanks."

"Ianto? You a coffee or a tea man?"

"Coffee, not too much milk, one sugar please." and Owen nodded and ducked out.

"So, you reconsidered?" Ianto said.

"I'd like that examination now." Jack came down the steps to join him, hopping up on the exam couch, feet dangling.

"You think you need it?"

"Of course. I shouldn't ask my staff to go through anything I'm not willing to go through."

"Admirable." Ianto grinned "Well, I wrote up your records, but it will give me chance to check them against reality. Take your shirt off." He watched as Jack complied, marvelling at the lack of scars or any marks at all. Ianto applied the stethoscope and listened to heart and lungs. He leaned in close and felt Jack's breath on his hair. Working his way through the gamut of tests, everything appeared disgustingly normal. Owen appeared with coffee ten minutes into the exam, took their situation in briefly and left, putting the mugs on the work table. His quick and silent exit made Ianto chuckle.

"What's wrong?"

"Oh, I don't think it will take Owen a million years to work out why you hired me" Ianto said.

"Oh? That implies I hired you for something superficial..."

"So Suzie was wrong about the eye candy?"

"Not...entirely." Jack grinned "But that's a bonus. I really did hire you because you're a good doctor, you took my return from the dead remarkably well. The reports from Torchwood 1 only confirmed what I thought, that you are cool under fire and sickeningly compassionate." he paused, then added "No, I don't really mean that. We need compassion, even if it can get in the way sometimes. You don't give up easily, you see a job through it its end, however distasteful, and you do have a sense of humour. Did you really believe I was going to shoot you?" he asked.

"Yes, I did."

"Then why didn't you run? or attack me? or...anything?"

"You could have dropped me before I got to the door." Ianto said simply "If I'm going to be shot, I would prefer a bullet placed acurately through my skull than one randomly placed over distance. I'm not good with pain."

"But you're a doctor"

"Pain looks good on other people, that's what they're for" Ianto replied.

"Sisters of Mercy?"

"I Was Wrong"

"You were?"

"That's the name of the song, you dope." Ianto rolled his eyes again, a very expressive gesture.

"Ah, sorry, yeah..." Jack grinned again, showing teeth "Funny, didn't have you pinned as a Goth Kid."

"Ah well, we all have our little secrets."

"So, you were saying, talking of secrets...you can't handle pain?"

"I'm not the best, no. Forget stoic, I moan."

"I know you do..." Jack's grin was lascivious. Ianto rolled his eyes again.

"So, returning to the question I asked you to start with, why didn't you try to get the gun off me?"

"Same thing. If someone is waving a gun around, if you go for them, nine times out of ten you won't manage it, unless you're trained in unarmed combat and even then its dodgy. Standard police advice, don't be a have-a-go-hero, it doesn't work."

"I wasn't waving a gun around at the time."

"You were still armed and what are the chances I'd get to it before you could, even if I did go for you?" Ianto shrugged "Assuming I did get it, what then? If I shot you, you would have come back anyway, I can't kill you. And even if you had been able to die, I'm not a killer. I know how to fire a gun, I was taught at Torchwood 1, but I don't like it. I've never shot anything, actually, apart from a target. Shooting you would have got me into so much trouble, even if I could prove who you were and that you were out to get me, Torchwood is above the police, remember? Their first question would probably be, if Torchwood figured I needed to die, what had I done? It seemed like a good time to give up, all my problems solved. End of story."

"What problems?"

Ianto looked at him, trying to work out the motive behind the question. It wasn't hard. Jack wanted to know if there were any demons that needed exorcising.

"Simple. I lost my fiancee, I lost my future, I'm immune to retcon and then I met you"

"I'm a problem?"

"You were when I saw you return from the dead"

"Oh, yeah, see what you mean" Jack regarded him as he sat down at his desk and scribbled something on a form.

"You can get dressed now, I'm done here" Ianto said, swivelling round on the chair and looking up at him.

"Oh, right" the disappointment was evident.

"About that date" Ianto said and Jack's head came up, his eyes hopeful.

"Yeah?"

"How about Maxi's, eight o'clock?"

**_So the Doc has started work...what next? Reviews welcome, you've all been nice so far. Believe me, without you, this story wouldn't have continued, so thanks for that. And thanks to Silvercat63 for the valuable review, I hope I've addressed it in character,let me know, thank you.  
_**


	3. The Doctor in Action

**Disclaimer: Don't own Torchwood or the characters, they are the BBCs domain. I just own the plotline. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. Would you want to resemble any of this lot anyway?**

_**The doctor in action…**_

"Ianto! Get in here, we need you!" the shout was loud and urgent, by-passing the need for the communicator in his ear. He left the SUV at a run, hauling a rigid red box and a green grab-bag with medical gear in them. "On my way, what's the siutation?"

"Owen's down, Suzie's taken a cut to her arm, not serious, Tosh is OK." His voice sounded strained. "Situation under control."

"How are you?" he was met with silence "Jack? Talk to me!"

"Ianto?" it was Tosh.

"Tosh, I'm on my way, two minutes tops. What's wrong…?"

"Jack's dead…"

**TW**

Owen groaned and blinked, returning reluctantly to consciousness.

"Ooooh, tell me I had a good night to blame this on…"

Ianto grinned "Sorry mate, no can do. How do you feel?"

"Like there's an American Marching Band in my head, annoying teenage girls with Kazoos…"

"Well, just lie still. You're at the Hub, everyone's safe. Crisis over."

"Tosh?" there was genuine alarm in his voice.

"I said, everyone is safe. She's fine Owen. Now be calm. Take it easy. You've had a bad knock to the head, concussion at the very least. I've stitched a wound in your shoulder and your left knee took a hammering. You are not going anywhere."

"Yes Boss." He frowned "How's Jack?"

**TW**

Ianto looked down at the prone body in the bed and sighed. Usually Jack came back quickly, but not this time. He was still stubbornly dead after four hours. Tosh was sitting vigil in the room. Ianto performed a few checks and then turned to her. "All we can do is wait." He said.

"I didn't know…" she said and looked up at him, eyes wide and teary.

"He didn't tell you?"

"NO! Why Ianto, you knew, even you?"

"What, that he could come back?" Ianto tried to smile "I that found out by accident and he retconned me." He explained quietly "But it doesn't work on me" and he proceeded to tell her what had happened at the hospital.

"You're immune to retcon?" she breathed.

"Yeah…" her eyes were wide and lost and he suddenly found himself wanting to take her in his arms, to comfort her. "Hug?" he suggested and moments later found her slim warm body in his arms.

**TW**

A great gasping breath heralded Jack's return to wakefulness a full two hours later. His death had been a hard one, ripped to shreds by a large unforgiving alien with multiple limbs and a serious attitude problem. It was pissed about landing on a strange planet with no escape and took it out on the people who might have been able to help, but it was panicking and beyond reason. It turned from diplomatic mission to take-down which proved to be ugly and damaging to both sides.

Ianto was standing near Jack's head, waiting, hands holding his shoulders down, stopping him from toppling to the floor as his body bucked and resisted the return to life. He also had an oxygen mask over Jack's mouth and nose, making it easier to take that first desperate breath. Jack grabbed him and held on, his long fingers digging painfully into Ianto's forearms.

"Its OK, relax, everybody is safe. You're back in the Hub, everything is taken care of, you can rest easy." The litany reached Jack's ears and he slumped, releasing Ianto's arms and lying back. "Just breathe" Ianto instructed as Jack coughed.

"Thank you." He said tiredly and closed his eyes. "How long…?"

"Six hours. Owen has a concussion, he's resting on the couch. I stitched Suzie's arm and she and Tosh have gone home to rest although they're on standby in case of emergency."

"Good." Jack gestured that he wanted to sit and Ianto helped him up slowly and carefully.

"There, how do you feel now?"

He took the mask off and sat there quietly for a moment. "This helped, thank you." He handed the mask back and Ianto turned off the taps on the gas bottle. "I thought it might make it easier for you. Tosh knows about you returning though. She was a little cut up you'd never told her."

"Yeah, well, never seemed to be the right time. 'Oh, by the way, I can't stay dead'. Like, how do you tell people that?"

'Suzie and Owen both know…'

'They were like you, found out by accident. They only found out a few weeks ago too. I was going to tell her, really…just…didn't know how. Tosh is fragile. She was held in a UNIT detention centre when I located her. She'd been convicted of stealing classified records, they were holding her mother hostage. I asked her to work for me because she can decipher languages, she's brilliant. She has a gift for translation.'

'I think you'd better be on your best behaviour around her, even so. Apologise and explain tomorrow, OK? You know, box of chocolates, flowers, on bended knee, that kind of thing?'

'OK, I will. So…' Ianto smiled and said nothing. Jack regarded him seriously. "You must have done good out there, otherwise we wouldn't be here."

"I cleaned up and brought you home, hardly rocket science." Ianto said dismissively.

"Don't do yourself down. What happened to the alien?"

"In cryo until I can deal with it. I thought it best in case it has any miraculous regenerative properties. Didn't fancy being taken over while I was dealing with you lot."

Jack smiled "Good call." He said and jumped down, swayed and allowed Ianto to steady him with a supportive arm.

"Take it easy, Sir, don't want you falling over again."

"I'm fine, you worry too much."

"Well if I don't, who will?"

Jack merely grinned his trademark Harkness grin and walked out of the room.

As it happened, the alien stayed dead and Jack walked in on Ianto the following morning carrying out the post mortem examination with customary precision.

"You ever done this kind of thing before?" Jack asked "You know, at Torchwood 1?"

"Nope, never got close. I was a junior in research, so I only ever got to see samples, not whole bodies. This is amazing…"

"You found anything?" Jack smiled at Ianto's obvious appreciation of the opportunities his new job was affording.

"Blue blood, weird DNA strands, totally incompatible with human DNA, no idea what race, there's no corresponding data from previous encounters. It's a new one."

"Looks like a Raxakaflite to me, but I could be mistaken."

"A what?" Ianto looked up suspiciously, wondering if Jack was teasing but the man's expression was serious.

"Raxakaflite, it's a warlike race from across the other side of the universe. This guy was pissed, believe me. He did not want to listen to anyone or anything. Those guys live to fight, they determine who rules by force of arms and you don't get to breed unless you can beat off the opposition. Then you have to subdue your mate as well. Those girls don't appreciate losers!" Jack paused thoughtfully. "If that's what this is. As I said, I'm not sure so don't quote me."

"OK, possible Raxa…"

"…kaflite." Jack finished. "from the planet Raxakafla."

"Raxakaflite. Thank you. Well, whatever he was, assuming it was a 'he', he wouldn't have been able to survive in our atmosphere. No way are the lungs – and I'm assuming they're lungs, they have the appropriate cellular structure – no way are they large enough to support his size. Bone density is lighter too."

"So he wouldn't have had a pleasant stay anyway?"

"Not according to my findings, no. Anyway, Jack, did you just call to see how I was getting on or was there something else on your mind?"

Jack grinned at him. "Oh, this boy is good." He chuckled and fixed Ianto with a look "Came to ask you to dinner actually. If you'd like to…I thought I'd cook you dinner this time…"

"This is another date then?"

"Interested?"

Ianto paused, just to prolong the moment. Jack looked cool and calm on the surface but Ianto could see the anticipation underneath and it was killing him. He smiled. "That would be nice, so yes, I accept. You'd better come to mine then…" He watched Jack try and fail not to let the excitement show as he bounded out of the medical bay reminding Ianto of nothing so much as Tigger from the Winnie the Pooh stories – boundless energy, heart in the right place, not always right but enthusiastic to the point of being a pain in the arse. And Ianto was also pretty sure that, like Tigger, there was only one of him. He hoped so anyway. He figured the world probably couldn't cope with more than one.

**There you go, Ianto is settling in and finding his feet. This is a quick update as I am feeling guilty that I haven't written much since xmas. Hope everyone is having a great 2010 and I'm sooooo jeakous of everyone who got to see GDL and JB in panto this year! The snow and lack of money conspired to stop me. Ah well, maybe next year. **


	4. Blood is Thicker Than Water

**Disclaimer: Don't own Torchwood or the characters, they are the BBCs domain. I just own the plot line. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. Would you want to resemble any of this lot anyway?**

**M for content again...swearing mostly.  
**

_**Blood is Thicker Than Water…**_

'Jack, I need to talk to you.'

'OK Ianto, shoot.'

'Er…I'd prefer not to do this at gun point, if you don't mind…'

Jack paused a fraction of second before laughing out loud. 'Funny guy, huh? OK, take a seat. What can I do for you?'

Ianto had taken his opportunity the last time Jack had 'died' to take some blood so he could do some tests. He felt it a priority under the circumstances. The Captain hadn't actually agreed to this but there was a deal about Jack Harkness that Ianto didn't know but he felt it his duty to find some of it out, especially the biological side of him. Jack healed incredibly quickly and he wasn't sure if that was the effects of the Vortex energy or what it had done to him. He was also trying to understand the mechanics of it all. While the quicker and cleaner the death, the faster he came back held true for most instances, there had been a couple of times where that equation hadn't proved true.

The Team might have non existent medical records but Ianto had managed to glean a lot from reading past mission reports. Somebody had maintained decently detailed records of all the team's missions and he was able to learn a lot from them, saving himself having to ask extensive questions about injuries and illnesses from the team themselves. He also managed to find out a lot about Jack from the early observations of the first Torchwood operatives, Emily Holdroyd and Alice Guppy. They had maintained a more objective air concerning Jack and his exploits. Their observations were detailed and impartial (well, at least, impartial considering they were obviously not affected by his charm).

Jack's blood seemed to be suffused with the same energy as the rest of him and Ianto wanted to understand if it retained any of those properties when it was removed. Ianto also wanted to understand whether the blood could impart its qualities to the receiver. Any one of them could suffer severe damage at any moment and he wanted to be ready. After all, Jack had said himself, they needed to be.

The operating theatre was good to go, a proper examination couch in one corner with screens that could be pulled round it, metal tables, a proper operating bed, with the brightest of overhead lights and state-of-the-art, top-of-the-range equipment. He had proper trauma equipment, anaesthesia and monitors. There was a suite of four rooms, including post op and intensive care, plus two bedrooms with ensuite shower rooms, complete with equipment to handle patient aftercare. The beds were adjustable to allow for any alien patients they might have to accommodate. Overall, he was impressed at the speed with which things had happened and said so. Jack merely smiled and expressed the hope non of them would need it any time soon.

Jack had to admit that having an ex-Torchwood medic with them was an advantage. He was no stranger to alien life and technology and he also had extensive Torchwood field training. Post Canary Wharf, he had worked in A&E for the better part of a year, and he had also, he told Jack, worked for the Red Cross in a war zone a few years previously. It had been his first post-qualification job as an eager idealistic young doctor out to make a difference. Ianto had quickly found he was getting shot at on a daily basis while predominantly treating gun shot wounds and knife injuries. His dreams of changing the world had dissipated fairly quickly. He was, however, a tenacious and conscientious researcher and Torchwood had been eager to draw him in and mould him to their needs on his return.

Ianto had to admit that Jack's blood intrigued him. Standard tests revealed it had neither blood group nor rhesus factor. It coagulated normally, although he knew Jack more often than not healed quickly enough not to require this factor. It displayed an ability to transfuse with all blood groups, even negative rhesus factors. He sat back from his test results feeling slightly stunned. It meant, quite simply, that their boss was a walking blood transfusion service.

'What can I do for you?' For a moment, Ianto just stood there, uncertain what Jack's reaction would be. After all, he hadn't asked his permission with regards to this.

'Your blood.' He said, succinctly.

'What about it?'

'I've been running some tests, I thought you'd like to hear the results.'

'OK, do I recall giving you permission?' Jack frowned.

'Er…no Sir. Not entirely. I believe you actually expressed slight reluctance.'

'I did, huh?' Jack sat back and put his feet on the desk. 'I see that didn't stop you though.' He smiled, amused. 'Might have known you'd not take no for an answer. So, what have you found?'

'A few interesting things. My problem is, I have no other 51st century subjects to use as control so I have no idea if the properties associated with your blood are due to your immortality or your origins as a 51st century human.'

'Right, so what have you found? I might be able to throw some light on it.'

'First, you have no Rhesus factor.'

'That's evolution.'

'So you knew about that?'

'Yes. Our previous medic pointed it out to me.'

Ianto ticked off a point on his clipboard. 'It doesn't seem to fit any established blood groups either. Although it seems not to cause a problem mixing with anything.'

'Hey, what can I say, its friendly.'

'Well, it is yours after all. Guess it comes with the territory.'

Ianto gazed at Jack until the man responded with a 'What?'

'You realise what this means?'

'That my blood flirts like I do?'

'You're a walking blood transfusion service Jack.'

'I believe I remember saying that I didn't think that was a good idea.'

'Yes, well, I made an executive decision based upon the fact that as your doctor I can't work with half a story and I need to know exactly what my resources are.'

'I'm a resource?'

'Well, that depends…'

'On what?'

'Whether you give your permission to be.' Ianto frowned. 'Jack, are you seriously going to tell me you'd deny someone a transfusion of your blood, any one of us, if we were bleeding to death?' Jack frowned. 'Because I can't understand how you could possibly do that, knowing what you know.' He reached over and took the Webley out of its holster where it lay on the desk. 'Here.' He said, handing it over. Frowning, Jack took it and Ianto turned his back. 'Shoot me.'

'Pardon?'

'Go on, back of the head. Quick and clean, please.' He folded his arms and waited.

'What are you doing, Ianto? This isn't funny. I have no intention of…'

'Too damn right it isn't funny, Jack!' Ianto whirled on him and glared into his eyes although his voice, when he spoke, was reasonable in tone. 'Too damn right it isn't funny. It isn't funny that you would stand there and deny your team something that could potentially save their lives! It isn't funny that you've got me working for you because you have no medic, but you won't let me do my job. It isn't funny that you can't let me go because I'm immune to retcon otherwise you'd have to shoot me. Its Torchwood Protocol. But if I want to resign, what do I do? If I want to leave because you won't allow me to do my job, what then? If you won't allow me to progress my researches so your team can receive the best possible care if bloody Torchwood manages to give them a near-death experience, then you'll have to do your duty, Harkness. Right now, I wonder why I let you talk me into this. I should have let you put a bullet in my head right there and then. I should have run and taken my chances.' Jack was staring at him, open mouthed.

'All this because I didn't give you my precious permission to experiment with my blood?'

'No Jack, because you won't use your own blood to save your own team mates.'

'Ianto, you're the scientist. Surely you know I have no idea what it could do to them. You have no idea…I wouldn't wish this on my own worst enemy.' Jack snarled. 'Do you have any conception of how it feels to watch loved ones die and to carry on, to wait over a century for someone that shows up only to tell you there's nothing can be done about you, that you're wrong, you are not meant to be?' He glowered at the younger man. 'I am immortal, not just immortal, I keep coming back, I snap back to the point I was just before I died. Prime of life, factory settings, perfection! Ianto, I have no idea if exposure to my blood could render someone else immortal too. Don't you see? I am not going to risk that, ever.' He grimaced. 'If you cannot live with that then I don't see a future for us, do you?'

'Us?' Ianto was puzzled. 'Us? What's this about 'us' exactly?'

'I thought we had something going here?' Jack smiled sadly 'You know, you and me?'

'We have something Jack, but we're not much more than fuck buddies…'

'You said you wanted more than that.'

'Yes I do, but I don't know if you can give me it. Look, this is nothing whatever to do with the point I'm trying to make.'

'I know, but it has everything to do with you leaving. I don't want you to leave Yan.'

'Then talk to me. Let me do some more tests at least.'

Jack sighed and sat down again. 'OK, OK, if only so you can confirm this as a bad idea. Mind you, I have no idea how you're going to test this. I do not want immortal lab rats running around because you gave them my blood, you got that?' he fixed Ianto with a forbidding look, then sighed. 'Look, I don't want to deny anybody my blood if they need it, but I don't want to pass my immortality on either. Nobody deserves that. Can't you understand?'

'Yes, I can. I just…I can't ignore a potential life saving resource, can I?' he turned sad eyes on Jack and sighed heavily. 'I couldn't save the victims of Canary Wharf and I'm not in a hurry to lose any more team mates, OK?'

'Ianto, I do understand. I appreciate what you've done so far. If push comes to shove, I'd do it rather than see anyone die, but I hope it doesn't come to that. Lets keep me in reserve, shall we?'

Ianto nodded. 'OK Sir. We'll see how things go, for now.'

'No more thoughts of resigning?'

'No Sir.'

'Good, would hate to have to write the report on that one…' unexpectedly, Jack leaned over and brushed Ianto's lips with his own. Ianto leaned in and kissed back. They broke apart for air and regarded each other from a few inches distant. 'How about tonight?' Jack asked. 'Your place, 7.30?' Ianto smiled.

'OK, my place, 7.30, shall I bring a bottle?'

'I'm always wary of asking doctors that one, you never know what's in it.'

Ianto rolled his eyes again and exited the office. Jack watched him go with a regretful glance. He hated arguing with the doctor but he was very wary about certain things and that was one of them. He already knew he could revive people with a kiss, well, a breath anyway but what was the fun in that? A kiss transferred the energy just as well and was more fun, for both parties. Jack shrugged, went back to his seat and applied himself to deciding what he was going to cook for Ianto.

**Reviews please, sorry its taken so long to update...**


	5. Ianto Jones and the Last Crusade pt 1

**Disclaimer: Don't own Torchwood or the characters, they are the BBCs domain. I just own the plotline. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. (seriously, would you want to admit to resembling any of this lot anyway?)**

**WARNING: usual smut warning, swearing, adult issues, etc… **

**Ianto Jones and the Last Crusade.**

"Torchwood, comin' through," Jack said as they ducked under the scene of crime tape and flashed an ID card at a harassed-looking police constable. "Sorry, people, this is now our jurisdiction. Everybody out please, or do I have to drag you through that Official Secrets shit again?" Detective Kathy Swanson regarded Jack with thinly disguised annoyance and faced him down across the dining table in the modest terrace house in Splott.

"Care to explain what is going on this time, Harkness?" She demanded.

"Aw, come on, Gloria, you know I can't do that. Now, please move your people out of here, as fast as possible. This is a dangerous situation and we need to get a move on. Tosh, scan the body please. Doctor Jones…what have we got here?" Ianto moved politely around Swanson, who eyed him with a mix of hostility and undisguised curiosity, to crouch beside the sprawled body on the carpet and inspect the corpse.

"Victim is male, early thirties, rigor has set in… Time of death somewhere between—," he checked his watch, "—four and seven I would say, given the warmth of the room and the pooling of the body fluids." He inspected the matted head injury. "Blunt force trauma to the back of the head—," Ianto rolled the body slightly, "—and rather unusual wounds to his back. One seems to have pierced the left side on a level with his heart. As to which injury killed him, I'd have to do a post mortem to be sure but I don't have to be a forensic medic to suggest he was stabbed through the heart. I can make an educated guess as to what caused the injuries but I might not be correct." Jack squeezed his shoulder.

"Do what you can, that's what you're here for," he said reassuringly. "We'll get the body back to the Hub and you can do a full autopsy there. Owen, was anything revealing on his hard drive?" Owen sat back from trying to access the computer and shook his head.

"Sorry, Jack, I'm going to need more time to crack this one. Whoever this guy was, it looks like he, or one of his mates, encrypted this thing so thoroughly my usual programs won't touch it."

"And that fact alone tells us a great deal," Jack commented. "He needed that level of security for a reason and I don't think it was because he was worried about identity theft."

"Well, I'm going to need Mainframe for this one. Have to say, I am moderately impressed."

"Load it up then, we'll take it back with us." He turned to Tosh and Suzie. "You find anything?"

"Nothing," Tosh said emerging from the bedroom. "Seems as if he hardly uses…used this place, there were very few personal possessions apart from a few photos and his clothes. All business suits, ties, average off-the-peg stuff. He has a few pairs of jeans and beach wear, nothing out of the ordinary.

"Can't find anything in the kitchen, the utility room, the loo…" Suzie confirmed. Her manner was somewhat tense and a little offhand as she strode into the living room. "What do you expect to find, Jack?" She covered her nose and sneezed inelegantly.

"Bless you," Jack said automatically. "I don't know what I'm expecting. Anything, anything at all. Just keep looking. UNIT reports suggest this guy was working illegal alien artifacts for the last month right under our noses and I want to know how he did it." Jack was angry. He didn't like UNIT at the best of times and they loved rubbing Torchwood's noses in it when they knew something Jack didn't, especially if it was close to home and under Torchwood's, and thus Jack's, nose. "Whoever killed him is probably mixed up in this shit too. We need to find them and quickly."

"Well, there's nothing here, Jack. He must have kept the stuff somewhere else." Toshiko offered.

**TWTWTW**

"He was killed with a knife, rather unusual shape." Ianto held up a cast of the wound. "It's the best I can manage with my limited experience. I'm an A&E doctor, not a SOCO. I had to google how to do this, for God's sake, so if this is lacking a professional edge, don't blame me, okay?" Jack grinned.

"Okay," he agreed. "Look, so far as I'm concerned, you're doin' fine." He examined the cast, a blade with three edges like a Y shape. "Better than your predecessor did anyway. Better than me, too, I have no idea where to start with this stuff."

"You're lucky I've always been interested in forensics then."

"Oh ho. You a closet CSI fanboy, hah?"

"Jack, I got that report you wanted from the archives…" Suzie's voice floated down to them. She sneezed dramatically.

"Thanks, Gorgeous. Put it on my desk, would you?"

"Will do." She sounded tired and stuffed up. Another sneeze reached their ears.

"And after that, go home, okay?" Jack ordered.

"Okay, but I'm not that bad…."

"Suzie, this is Dr. Jones telling you to go home, okay?" Ianto called out to her. "You've got flu and you might as well not infect the rest of us. Stay home, keep warm, drink plenty of fluids and call me if you're no better in a couple of days. Alright?"

"Alright, Ianto…" her footsteps died away.

"Is it me, or is she more than a little tense these days?" Jack asked into the silence. The doctor blinked, the question having come a little out of left field.

"PMT?" he suggested. "I confess, I haven't noticed but then, I don't know her as well as you do. All I can see at the moment is she has a bad cold, maybe influenza."

"Well, she's been acting a little weird, even before the flu. She's been spending far too much time down in the archives and on top of that, she's been messing with that armor-plated glove thingy…"

"Armor-plated glove thingy? Is that a technical description, Jack? I think I've missed something here." Jack rolled his eyes and chuckled.

"It's a resurrection gauntlet. It fetches people back from the dead." Jack smiled a little mirthlessly as Ianto shuddered. "They only come back for a couple of minutes, hopefully to tell us what they saw, but usually they spend the time panicking or disbelieving you."

"Well, it could be your approach. What do you say exactly? Hi there," Ianto affected a bad American accent, "I'm Jack Harkness and by the way, you're dead?"

"That's _Captain_ Jack Harkness, if you please." Jack smirked. "Hey, do you fancy dinner tonight?"

"Jack, we have dinner almost every night."

"I mean a proper date. Let's go out to a restaurant. Tosh seems to have perfected her Rift Predictor program and it's showing nothing for a whole two days."

"Then she hasn't perfected it. It has to be wrong. Two days? That's unheard of." Jack laughed and clapped Ianto on the shoulder.

"Oscar's Bar? 7:30?"

"Are you paying?" Ianto asked and Jack nodded enthusiastically. "Okay then, Oscar's it is but make it eight. I happen to have this post mortem to finish, you see, and the boss will want to report on his desk by tomorrow, won't he?"

**TWTWTW**

"Ianto, all you've done for the last half hour is talk shop." Jack was sitting across the table from the doctor and watching him intently as he forked mouthfuls of pasta into his mouth and chewed appreciatively. Oscar's was quiet, an intimate little place with low lighting and gentle music.

"Sorry, Jack." Ianto stared at him as he ate, watching the flickering candle light catching Jack's grey eyes. "You pick something to talk about then."

"Last time I did that with a dinner date, I had to retcon him afterwards." Ianto laughed and Jack chuckled at the sound.

"Good job we work together then."

"I wish we didn't sometimes… Sometimes I fantasize that I'm a normal guy and that I work in an office somewhere…"

"Oo, careful, exotic things, offices," Ianto remarked.

"Yeah, I know. Office romances, photocopying your…"

"Quite," Ianto agreed, one eyebrow arching upwards, eloquently. Jack grinned. "It must be hard," Ianto was looking at him with sympathy. "Not leading a normal life, I mean."

"Sometimes," Jack agreed, studying the tablecloth for a moment.

"You're amazing, you know…" the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. Jack's head snapped up and his gaze met Ianto's in surprise. "Well, you are… I mean, you're immortal. You've lived through so much history. You saw the Victorian age first hand." Ianto stopped, and Jack could almost hear the cogs going round as he thought. "Do the bad points really outweigh the good ones? Or did you hate it too much to see the positive stuff?"

"I'm not sure there was any 'positive stuff'. I'm from the 51st Century, Ianto, I was never able to alter timelines by telling anyone anything, I watched people die because I couldn't hasten technology and change anything by telling people about the stuff I knew. The only people I did that for was Torchwood. I taught them all CPR, because I knew they wouldn't share what they knew with anyone else. I could trust them with that, at least. I was an alien, after all, and as far as Torchwood is concerned, if it's alien, it's ours. Arming the human race against the future and all that. They used my knowledge if it could help them survive or do their jobs better and I was able to give them that much. The only thing I refused to do was let them use anything of me because I have no idea what it might do. I wonder sometimes if you could clone me? I mean…" he chuckled. "What would happen if I got dismembered? Would a separate Jack Harkness grow back from every part? Too risky. It's the reason I don't want to fall out with you over using my blood."

"I see now. I'm sorry I got so frustrated. I could see a potential resource going to waste."

"I know, but it really is too unknown to risk, Yan. Really, no detriment to you as a medic but you can't know everything."

"I know. I just…I want to do my job to the best of my ability, that's all. You hired me, I don't want to disappoint you."

"You won't." Jack's warm smile held promise. "You wanna blow this place and go home?" Ianto swallowed, nodded and drained his beer while Jack got up to pay.

They walked home through busy streets, Ianto's feet taking them unerringly to his flat. He knew what was going to happen now. He would invite Jack inside, they may or may not get around to having coffee—that depended on how horny Jack was—and then they would go to bed and spend the night, as they usually did, making mad passionate love to each other. Ianto had to admit to himself, he was as much to blame as Jack on that score. They had become a couple in so many ways over the last few weeks. Jack was still resisting it in some ways, but he seemed to be heeding Ianto's warning that he didn't do casual. He was trying, at any rate.

As Ianto unlocked the door, his phone buzzed. Unable to reach it, it went to voice mail and stopped. Jack's began to ring almost as soon as Ianto's stopped. He studied caller display and muttered "Owen," before thumbing it open and answering with a curt "Yeah?"

Ianto went inside and left Jack to it, heading into the kitchen and switching the coffee machine on but in no time at all, it seemed, Jack was calling him.

"Ianto, emergency! That was Owen at the Hub, they need us."

With a resigned sigh, Ianto turned off the coffee machine and left quickly, pausing only to grab his car keys—they had walked to the restaurant from his flat—before following Jack at a run. The evening was, so far as Ianto was concerned, not going to follow its predicted course. As far as Torchwood went, however, a disrupted evening was entirely typical.

"I thought you said Tosh's predictor program said it was going to be quiet?"

"I did, and I have complete faith in that. This might very well not be Rift related."

"True enough, it might not be."

"I wonder if the darling of Cardiff CID has anything more for us?"

Owen phoned again with a rendezvous address in Lisvane. Another murder had taken place and the Police were already there. Ianto drove a little faster than was safe but the traffic light converter that Tosh had rigged changed the sequence of lights to allow them smooth sailing all the way to Lisvane.

This time the house was in a more salubrious part of the city, set in half an acre of grounds surrounded by trees. It was screened from the road by a high hedge and a long drive lead to the front door.

"Nice place," Jack commented, seeing the black SUV parked ahead of them on the gravel. Owen stood there waiting, Tosh scanning the area from inside the car. Jack looked at Owen and raised an eyebrow. "Why are you waiting?"

"DI Swanson," Owen scowled. "She wanted to speak to you before any of the rest of us started disrupting her crime scene. I said we couldn't wait but she was adamant."

Jack shrugged. "Any luck with our first victim's computer?"

"I left the program running on it. I hope to have something for you by tomorrow morning…"

"Captain Harkness…!" the scathing voice reached him from the door to the mansion. "So, you claiming this one as well?"

"I am, Gloria, I am. Why wouldn't you let my team in ahead of me? We're losing valuable time here."

"Because I'm a little sick of this cloak-and-dagger need-to-know crap. I am a law enforcement officer, appointed by Her Majesty's Government to protect its citizens. I've worked hard to get where I am and I've earned my rank." Her implication was clear that he had not. "You seem to think you can ride rough-shod over that. This is the second murder in 24 hours. Now I want to know if I need to be worried about a serial killer and what I need to do about it?"

Jack paused and looked at her carefully. "Gloria…"

"And you can start by treating me with a little more respect. My name is Kathy. Use it or fuck off!" and she turned tail and walked inside. Ianto smiled. Owen looked at the floor. Jack looked surprised.

"Was it something I said?"

"Way to go, Jack," Ianto said, trying to suppress his laughter. "I thought she was very restrained."

Inside, the walls and floor and ceiling were liberally coated in arterial spray. Someone had attacked in a frenzy. The body of a young woman lay sprawled on the mat before the fireplace and Ianto checked her over finding similar wounds in her back to the young man from earlier in the day."

"So what do these two have in common?" Kathy asked. Jack had allowed Kathy to stay this time. She was prowling round the house restlessly, thoughtful and quiet. "No ideas, Captain? I thought these were your cases?"

"We're working on them. The first one was stabbed with a knife of rather unusual origin. This one seemingly has the same injuries. So that suggests the same assailant. Or does it? We have no idea if there are two knives or if there is some hidden connection. Okay, Kathy, you want to work with us on this? What does your database say on injuries like this? Anyone else been attacked with knives like this in the past?"

"I can find out for you. Anything else? Like motive?"

"We need to establish a connection between these two. Clubs, membership to anything, seen together, and if they knew each other, how did they know each other? We have to find out what she's been doing for the last few weeks." Jack had modified his behavior toward the policewoman somewhat and seemed to be getting more out of her. "I could do with a liaison from your department. What about it, Kathy, someone who can work with me?"

She paused. "So now you want to poach someone from me, is that it?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of a liaison. We could work together better then."

"I'll think about it," was all she said.

**TWTWTW**

"Mellissa Wright, Caucasian female, late twenties, hazel eyes, long straight black hair, most probably dyed. Wearing false eyelashes, makeup, glitter dust on skin of face and throat. Ligature marks on the neck, fractured hyoid bone. Suggests strangulation, bruising present on back of neck consistent with garroting." Ianto paused the recorder and frowned at Jack. "She was going out for the evening? Maybe meeting someone, or maybe she'd just come back from being out with someone."

"Possibly. Kathy is tracing the woman's last movements."

"I find it odd that in each case they've been attacked twice, you know? I'm thinking that the knife injury was done first, in both cases." Ianto frowned. "Why the second injury and why was it different in each case?"

"Like an experiment maybe? Not sure, but I've a horrible feeling there are going to be more before this is done. The only thing we can say is, the more there are the more information we will glean from them. Kathy's picked someone to come on board with the liaison thing, by-the-way."

"Oh? Who's the poor sap who pulled the short straw then?"

"Apparently its a she. She's a young copper who is very keen. Kathy thinks we'll hit it off immediately. She said she daren't send me a man…" Ianto laughed.

"Wise woman. Besides, you're mine and I don't share."

"Oh really, doctor, is that so?"

"Yes it is. You'd better take note. If I find you with anyone else, I can be very vindictive."

"Oh, really? You can, can you?"

"Oh yes…" Ianto's eyes lost their focus for a moment, and then one of those incredibly sexy smiles lit his face. "Let's just say, I know a lot of ways to use a lot of my equipment in a very uncomfortable way…"

"Top that off by wearing a UNIT cap and I'm your man…" Jack's face split in a megawatt grin and he almost danced up the steps from the autopsy room. "Besides," his voice floated back down to Ianto's ears. "I love your equipment…."

TWTWTW

Ianto recognized the dark-haired Valley Girl with a gap-toothed smile and an innocent demeanor, who stood at the cog door entrance when it opened on Monday morning. "Good God, Gwen Cooper?" Ianto smiled.

"Ianto? Dr Jones? Jesus on a moped, who'd have thought it? I wondered where you'd gone. They said at the hospital you'd left."

"You asked about me?" Ianto smiled at her as she stepped into the Hub, eyes wide at the expanse of underground cavern.

"So this is the underground lair then?" she asked. "Well, when I didn't see you, I just enquired. They said you'd moved away. Nothing about working for this lot."

She was one of those wide-eyed rookies who was amazed by everything she saw. "I've heard of you, sure," she said to Jack, trailing after him as he took her on _The Tour_, as Owen liked to call it. She seemed a lot like an eager puppy to Ianto. Jack showed her a Weevil, her first alien. "You never forget your first Alien..." Owen quipped, drawing an un-ladylike snort from Tosh. They had watched as Jack had taken her to his office and sat her down and given her the rules and regulations to follow. She was seemingly lapping it up.

They all ate Chinese together later, round the board room table. Jack laughed and joked and Gwen looked suitably impressed, then he got up and excused himself.

"Need a pee, sorry. Talk amongst yourselves..." Gwen watched him go, eyes on the back view.

"He's...um...very good looking, isn't he? So, I'm dying to know... Is he married?" Gwen asked. Owen smirked and Ianto coughed and Tosh grinned. "What?" Gwen said. "Come on..."

"Jack isn't... like other men," Owen said.

"Aw, damn, you mean he's gay?"

"Not...exactly. He's... well, it doesn't matter to him what you are."

"No," Gwen looked suitably horrified. "You mean, he's done it with aliens?"

"Stop winding her up, Owen..." Tosh looked exasperated. "Gwen, Jack is taken. He and Ianto..."

"You? You and he are..." Gwen's eyebrows rose. "No, really though?" Ianto nodded, chewing his crispy chicken thoughtfully. "Well, I never."

"I'm back, kids, did ya miss me?" Jack bounded back and sat down, then looked from one to the other while everyone carefully avoided his eyes. "What? What did I miss?"

"Nothing, Jack, we were just telling Gwen how varied the job is," Tosh said with a smile.

"That has to be the understatement of the year," Jack grinned. " So, anyway, I was telling you about our last visitors, that alien sight seeing party from Proxima Venturus..."

**TWTWTW**

"Well, she's as nice and innocent as I remembered her," Ianto commented. "We'll soon knock that out of her."

"She's a nice kid. Not sure she'd cut out for this place though, liaison or no Liaison." Jack poured them both a whisky and sat back in his chair. Ianto took the offered glass and sat opposite.

"Give her time. I think she'll adjust."

"So, anyway, any more you can tell me about of bodies?" Jack asked.

"Not much. I've written the report. I'm really not a forensic scientist though, Jack, I might be missing things. You ought to let the SOCOs deal with this. You might have more information to work on if you did."

"Cannot take that chance. You just gotta do the best you can. You're doing fine from where I'm standing."

"You said yourself, you have no experience of this, though. So forgive me if I suggest you're not best placed to judge."

"Look, Ianto, you are a doctor. You are the only one we have right now. Do your best."

"I think you might be better giving this over to UNIT, they have the facilities and more experienced staff..."

"No, I don't trust UNIT. There's only one UNIT man I know who I would trust and he retired ages ago. The Brigadier is the only one with any integrity." Jack was adamant. "That's my last word on it, Ianto, don't ask me again, please."

**TWTWTW**

"Ow! Oh, careful...ow...Ianto..."

"Owen, stop moving..."

"I can't! Ow! that _hurts_!"

"It's going to, especially if you don't stay still for me. You got shot, what do you expect it to feel like? Now, will you hold still? This needs dressing..."

"But it hurts, a lot. I'm only a computer tech, I never signed up for this field work, I'm bollocks at it."

"Owen..."

"Owen, take it easy." Tosh stepped close and put her arm round his shoulders. "I know it's a tough one but hang in there and let Ianto do his stuff. Don't fall apart on me. After Adam..."

"Adam?" Ianto queried.

"Yeah, Adam," Owen replied. "Nice bloke, we used to have a laugh."

"What happened?"

"He died," Tosh said unnecessarily and then blushed. "Sorry, that was obvious."

Ianto smiled. "How?"

"He was attacked by weevils one evening as we were all heading home," Owen explained. "They were being organised and controlled by some alien that dropped through the Rift. Three of them waited while we split up, then they followed him. By the time we got to him, he was bleeding out. It was less than a month since our doctor had been killed. We had no one who could do anything for him, he was dying." Tosh was near to tears. Ianto wondered how close she and this Adam had been. "Jack is a rough and ready field medic at best. He tried, but it was too late." Owen looked at Ianto and sighed. "We've been... ow... muddling through..."

"Adam was an alien," Tosh went on. "He was a friendly one, he dropped through the Rift a couple of years back and Jack helped to rehabilitate him and gave him a job with us. We miss him, its been hard. First Chad, then him..."

Ianto reached for an anesthetic spray and misted it along the bullet graze on Owen's ribs. The bullet had ricocheted, so it didn't have the force of a head-on shot, but the injury had the appearance of a whip lash, raw and bloody. The spray took effect almost immediately, much to Owen's relief. He leaned on Tosh and closed his eyes. Ianto finished dressing the wound and finished up by giving Owen a dose of antibiotics followed by a tetanus shot, then ordered him home.

"But we're already a man down, Suzie..."

"She'll be better soon, but until then, we'll deal. You need painkillers and rest now, so go. Tosh, go with him, see him into bed and then come back to the Hub. I'll clear it with Jack. Owen, you're off fieldwork until further notice, you got that?" The man nodded and eased himself gingerly to the floor. Tosh helped him dress and then they both left.

**TWTWTW**

"Jack?"

"Yes, Ianto, what can I do for you?"

"My, you're cheery considering we nearly got wiped out this afternoon by an alien pimp."

"I'm fine."

"You died."

"So? Not permanent, not important. Next?"

Ianto sighed. "I've sent Owen home. He needs rest and time to heal. Tosh has gone too, I told her to come on back, though, once she had seen him settled."

"Tell her not to bother. The predictor program is working fine, there's nothing on the cards until tomorrow afternoon."

"Okay, about that..."

"What?"

"Staffing levels. You'll be watching the Rift on your own again. We're seriously undermanned, Jack."

"Always been this way. Haven't we had this convo before? We manage."

"Precisely. Ever wondered if that's why we lose people so often?"

"Small team, moves faster."

"Jack, we're not a terrorist cell."

"Some aliens wouldn't agree with you there."

"Okay, but the small team is currently made up of your doctor, your computer tech and your scientist."

"Your point being?"

"Specialists, Jack. Since when do you put your specialists in the field?"

"Since forever. We've always worked this way."

"Bollocks, Jack. You have the authority. Change it. Recruit more people, before its too late."

"Too late for what?"

"For the earth, Jack. Ever thought we might fail one day? Because there are not enough of us to manage?" Ianto turned and left the room, leaving Jack staring at empty air. Ianto headed for Owen's coffee machine, trying to figure it out in the man's absence.

Jack found him staring at it a short while later, nonplussed. The thing was a mystery. A hand came over his shoulder, turned a nob and flicked a switch. The machine gurgled into life as Jack leaned casually against the work top and met the doctor's eyes with a smile. "Horses for courses," he said gently. "The powers that be suggested that too many people would compromise our secrecy, make us too public."

"So we're the most public secret organisation the world has ever seen as a result? We ride around in an SUV with TORCHWOOD emblazoned on the side."

Jack laughed. "Blame Alex for that one. Look, we had to balance doing our job with keeping quiet about it for as long as we could."

"And if we don't have enough people, we'll fail. You lost a doctor, you lost Adam not too long ago. This is a dangerous job, Jack. Maybe you ought to be telling Gwen that?" Jack handed him a mug of coffee and Ianto sipped thoughtfully. "Sorry, Jack, not as good as Owen's."

Jack dug him in the ribs. "I'll remember you said that." he sipped his coffee and grimaced. "Hm, know what you mean, though..."

Ianto smiled and followed him back to his office. "I'll call Tosh," he offered.

"You do that, and I'll call the Brigadier."

"The Brigadier?"

"My UNIT contact. He's retired but he still has the smarts and the contacts. I'll take his recommendation about new people."

"Then you'll do it? Recruit more field agents?"

"I'll consider it. Even if only to cover us on a temporary basis until we're back on track."

Ianto nodded and went to give Tosh the good news. He didn't push further. He knew when it was time to back off and let Jack come to his own conclusions.

**To be continued...**

**Reviews please. hoped you liked this chapter.**


	6. Ianto Jones and the Last Crusade pt 2

**Disclaimer: Don't own Torchwood or the characters, they are the BBCs domain. I just own the plotline and some of that is also the Beeb's. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental (seriously, would you want to admit to resembling any of this lot anyway?).**

**Ianto Jones and the Last Crusade ~ Part Two**

The morning had begun quite nicely. Bright sunshine lit the Plas and made the fountain glitter, the bay was calm and the tourists were at a minimum. He sauntered over to the Tourist Centre and let himself in, feeling a little like the Man From Uncle. He chuckled. The Man From Torchwood. Well, there_ was_ a secret underground base behind an innocuous Tourist Office façade, they all took part in covert missions to save the world—and occasionally Splott—from annihilation, among other things. Actually, Owen had voiced his opinion on more than one occasion that where Splott was concerned, it would have been kinder not to try saving it.

"That's unfair, Owen," Ianto had countered. "There's nothing wrong with Splott, or Splo' as Estate Agents like to pronounce it."

"Yeah, okay, nothing a small, strategically-placed nuclear missile wouldn't cure…" Ianto had glowered at that but Owen was un-cowed.

"Morning!" Ianto called out as he walked through the cog door. That was the moment when things began to take a turn for the worse. Nobody answered. Normally by the time Ianto arrived Owen had already been there an hour, having made the morning coffee for everyone before getting on with his work. Normally, Jack was in his office drinking said coffee and going through letters and paperwork that Owen presented to him along with the coffee. Equally normally, Tosh would also have been in place behind her desk but she had further to travel and often the traffic was bad. All their cars were fitted with GPS and GDL. Owen had called it a Global Disruptor Link, software in their cars that allowed them to alter traffic light sequences to turn green, smoothing the way through in an emergency, as well as allowing the jamming of speed cameras and police radios; although they tried not to abuse its use, however tempting, Tosh had been known to 'test' it on her way to work. Obviously she hadn't done so this morning otherwise she, too, would have been there.

A quick search on the Hub's life signs monitor showed was no sign of Owen, nor anyone else for that matter, despite Ianto seriously worrying sometimes that Owen would actually show up on a life signs monitor in the first place. The man could sometimes act as if he'd crawled out from under a rock. The Pteranodon was in her nest, but Jack wasn't in his office. Suzie was presumably still at home, suffering. He really ought to make a house call on that one if she didn't show soon. Ianto shrugged, knowing it likely the alarm had gone off before he arrived and they had probably all attended the call-out. He decided that he had better get on and prep the medical bay just in case they got back in a worse state than when they had gone out. Jack still hadn't managed to hire anyone new although he had begun the process. Getting new staff could take weeks.

Ianto tried a comms unit to check in and see where they were but there was no answer. He flipped open his mobile, curious as to why there was no message. He usually got a text from either Tosh or Jack if they were out on a mission, but there was nothing. He tried calling Tosh but all he got was her voice mail. Ianto left a short 'call me' message. He tried Jack's number and got his voicemail too so he left another message. He was unable to connect to Owen's number at all._ Okay, now this is officially getting weird,_ he thought. He tried calling Suzie. She didn't pick up either. He left yet another message. Then he thought to ring Gwen.

"Hello?"

"Gwen? Hi, it's Ianto. Dr. Jones? Torchwood?" He tried to keep the relief out of his voice that someone was answering.

"Ianto, nice to hear from you. I tried to call Jack earlier but he isn't picking up…"

"You haven't heard from him then? I was rather hoping you might have. There's no message, nothing?"

"Nope, not a thing. Why? Is something wrong?" Ianto told her briefly and she said she would come right over. He put the phone down, thoughtful and not a little concerned. Hearing nothing from any of the team was more than unusual, it was downright worrying._ Think, Jones._ _How do I proceed with this one? We need to establish what happened._ Ianto went first to Owen's work station and brought up the cctv logs. He watched as the team were to be seen arriving that morning, time stamped a little over twenty minutes before he got there. He watched as Jack's land line rang and he answered it, expression growing darker as he listened. Moments after he had put the phone down, they went out the cog door in a hurry. His last words were "We have to go, now!" before leaving at a run. Tosh and Owen had followed obediently. Of Suzie there was no sign. That was, by now, little under three quarters of an hour ago.

_Okay, think_. He tried to calm down and think rationally._ How to find out what's happened? CCTV again? See if I can track them._ Unfortunately, Tosh had never run him through her programs or what they could do and he felt like he was wading through treacle. He managed to see the SUV leave the garage, pull away down Bute Street and disappear. Then he ran into a fog of not knowing how to pull up another camera. He was sitting like that when the alarm blared and the cog door rolled back and Gwen appeared with PC Andy in tow.

"What is he doing here?" Ianto asked bluntly.

"Charming," Andy retorted. "I've come to help. I am—or I was before you lot got your claws in her—PC Cooper's partner…"

"Sorry, Andy, no offence but this is supposed to be a secret base," Ianto replied. He felt churlish. The man had only come with Gwen to offer help and he needed all he could get right now.

"Secret, my eye." Andy Davidson's eyebrows rose expressively. "If it was so secret you wouldn't drive around in an SUV with Torchwood on the side, would you?"

"That's what I said," Ianto grinned and Andy shook his head in exasperation.

"You and your spooky-dos. What's happened then?"

"The team are missing. Usually, I get a text or a phone call to tell me they're on a mission; in case they come in damaged and need help, or need emergency care in the field. However, this morning I got here and nothing, zip, zilch, nada." He quickly filled them in on what he did know, which was pitifully little. "Can you put out a call in case anyone has seen the SUV? In fact, can you ask if anyone knows where it is already?"

"Sure, I'll call Control." Andy said, and thumbed his radio.

"Are you sure there's no mistake?" Gwen asked. "I mean, they might have run into problems with reception, if they've gone up into the mountains?"

"Believe me, our comms units work under really difficult conditions and they never go out without them on, ever." Ianto sighed.

"What exactly happened this morning? Every detail, Ianto. What do you know? Go back over it again…"

"I got here, about 0800. There was no one here; I called out as I came in the door, got no reply. I checked the CCTV and found they'd gone out… No, I tried calling them first, but all I got was Tosh's and Jack's voicemails. I left a message on each mobile. Suzie's not answering at home either and she's supposed to be off sick. I couldn't connect to Owen's number at all. It was then that I pulled up the CCTV…"

"What did you see?"

"Jack got a call…then they all left…"

"Who was the call from?"

"How should I kn…damn it! Of course. It came in on the land line." Gwen got to it marginally faster than he did and hit 1471.

"Caller withheld. Who knows this number?" she asked.

"Not many people. Your boss calls it, the PM, the Queen…"

"The Prime Minister?" Her voice was awed. "The…the Queen? Now you're taking the piss…" but one look at his face changed her mind. Ianto wasn't in the mood for joking.

"Yes, the Prime Minister, and yes, the Queen…" Ianto sighed. "We're a Crown Department, we get paid by the Crown. The Queen knows this number…as does Prince Charles and Prince William."

"Hang on." Gwen dialed a number and listened. "Hello? Bryn? It's Gwen, Gwen Cooper? Look, can you do me a trace on this number? I need all the calls made to it over the last…" she paused looking expectantly at Ianto.

"Oh, hour? Hour and a half?" he suggested.

"Hang on, Bryn. When was that CCTV time stamped?" she asked Ianto.

"Jack got the call just before they left around 7.40am." She checked her watch.

"I need the number of a call made to this phone around 0740 this morning and any calls before then for the previous twelve hours." There was a pause. "Yes, Bryn, I do have the authority. Look, tell DI Swanson it's to do with the on-going investigation into the knife murders and she can authorize it. We need this fast, Bryn. Please." She listened for a short while then put the phone down. "Sorry, he's being an ass because I'm not a DI."

"Don't worry. I'm not exactly head of Torchwood…." Ianto sighed. "Damn it, I'm a doctor, not a computer tech!" He threw his hands in the air. "I have no idea how this works. Should have thought of the phone thing myself…"

"You're not a police officer either. It's okay, Ianto, you're doing your best."

"It might not be enough. I need to see the CCTV from Bute Street and try to follow the car out of the city, to see where they went, but this is like wading through molasses." He was concentrating so hard he jumped when the phone rang. He picked it up to hear Kathy Swanson's voice down the line.

"What the hell is going on? Harkness?"

"Sorry, Detective Swanson, this is Dr. Jones, Ianto…I'm afraid the Captain isn't available right now…"

"Doctor, please tell me you've found something out. There's been another one…" Ianto frowned.

"Another one, what?"

"There's been another murder…"

"When, exactly? Did anyone telephone Jack this morning?"

"That's what I've been trying to do, but he's not answering. I presumed he knew about it, you lot always seem to be informed."

"I got here to find the team gone and no one has left me a message which frankly is against even Jack's disregard for protocol. Did you or anyone from your office call Jack at 0740 this morning?"

"I got in at 7.30am and tried to call him at eight but not before then. I'm the only one with his number so I doubt anyone else would have tried from my end, why?"

"PC Cooper requested a trace for this line from… your end," he paused, having no idea which department dealt with that kind of thing. "I wonder could you lend your authority to that request. Apparently there was some question over it because she isn't a DI…"

"I'll get on it."

"Thanks. I wondered also if any of your colleagues in Traffic have seen the SUV this morning?"

"I can ask that as well. If I hear anything, I'll call."

"Where is the murder, by the way?" She gave an address in Penarth.

"My boys are already there. Do you want me to hold off?" Kathy Swanson was asking him if she should hold off the investigation. Ianto frowned. Technically, in the absence of the others, he was Torchwood. Damn it all, he was the only one left…

**0o0o0o0o0o0**

"So, we have a white male, mid-sixties, overweight…"

"Diabetic to go by the contents of his medicine cabinet…" Andy supplied, coming back into the room from the bathroom.

"Thank you for that. Brown eyes, ginger hair…" Ianto looked at the blood splatter and sighed. "Stabbed, again."

"What was the time of death, can you estimate?"

"Ambient temperature... maybe a few hours ago, not much longer…" Ianto sighed. "Maybe not even that long…"

"Ianto, what is going on?" Gwen asked. "Summarize for me?"

"We've had a series of murders, you know that much, yes?" Gwen nodded. "There is no common factor in the victims, no correlation between age, sex, religion or any other bloody thing. So far as we know, none of the victims knew each other, none of them were in any way related. The only factor that links them is the weapon they were killed with. Any ideas?"

"Did they belong to any societies, same library even? A club, pub, darts team, internet site? Nothing at all?"

"I left Jack to go through that. So far as I know he didn't come up with anything significant."

"Same blood group?"

"Nope. I checked that one."

"Okay. Same color eyes?"

"Nope. Physical features came up zero. None of them are the same."

"So they are similar then. If you look at the fact that every detail is different…" Gwen paused at his blank look. "Well, it's like a logic problem. Whatever is true, the obverse must be true as well. If every detail is different, then they might have been chosen because they were all different, which makes the differences a common factor. You certain they are all completely different?"

"Yes, I am. We've had women and men, young and old, rich and poor and all points between. We've had a housewife and a Lawyer and a librarian. Blond and brown and now ginger, as well as blue, green and hazel eyes, now brown. Caucasian, Asian, West African, English, Welsh, French…"

"So maybe we can see a pattern from this. The differences might have been deliberate, like a scientific experiment." Ianto frowned and glanced at Gwen who was staring at the body intently.

"That is bloody brilliant." Ianto was appreciative. "I never considered that angle. So who would be doing experiments like that? The knife is alien-looking. This guy's wounds look very similar to the others but without making a cast of the wound I can't be sure."

"Are you saying this could be an alien attack?"

"It's possible."

"Another similarity," Gwen pointed out sagely. "So, they have more in common than you think."

"I kept telling Jack I wasn't a SOCO," Ianto sighed. "This needs someone with more experience."

"Don't beat yourself up. You've not done badly. Even the SOCOs work as a team then they transfer their information across to the detectives assigned to the case to put it all together. Seeing as you're only one man, I think you've done great."

"Thank you, I think. I'm not a medical examiner though, I'm a doctor." Ianto sighed. "And this gets us no closer to working out what's happened with the rest of the team."

"Okay, we know they left twenty minutes before you arrived. CCTV shows them leaving town down Bute Street and heading north. They didn't break any speed limits or the cameras would have picked them up, so..." She paused as Ianto cleared his throat.

"Actually, we have a piece of tech that allows us to jam them."

"Jam them?" Gwen squeaked and Ianto nodded.

"Okay, so we have no idea what happened to the team after they left Cardiff. They may or may not have been going at speed." Judging by the speed that they vacated the Hub it was being treated as an emergency by Jack.

"You get to where Suzie lives down Bute Street. I wonder if they were going to pick her up along the way?" Ianto mused.

"Suzie?" Gwen frowned.

"A colleague. She was off sick with flu when you came the first time." Ianto felt as if the answer was staring him in the face. "The first victim was a dealer in alien artefacts," he said absently.

Andy's radio crackled and they all paused as he answered it. "The SUV has been found. It's in a layby in the Brecons," he said. "The local coppers have secured the scene. I've asked for the police helicopter to overfly the area, just in case."

"Thank you, Andy. I'll gather it was empty." Andy nodded a little mournfully. "Okay, well, we have something to go on."

"There is another car at the scene too, a small 4x4, silver…"

Ianto frowned. "That sounds like Suzie's car…"

_**Hopefully you will not have to wait as long for the next chapter. Apologies but reality is interfering which is why I've not updated as often as I should like. More soon.**_


	7. Countrycide part 1

**Disclaimer: Characters owned by RTD and the BBC. I don't own any of it, except maybe the idea for the story, etc. etc. etc., no infringement of copyright intended, no money being made, etc, etc. Any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental. **

**My apologies that I haven't updated sooner. There are other things that have taken my attention recently. Stick with it, the next chapter will hopefully not take as long. Only my external harddrive crashed and burned, taking with it, among other things, the latest chapter I had written for this and I've had to work hard to retrieve the stuff I lost.  
**

**Countrycide 1  
**

The SUV sat unlocked on the side of the road, engine cold and lights off, empty. The computers were down, the screens blank. Suzie's small silver 4x4 also stood empty, facing the larger SUV. There was no sign of anyone. Ianto stood there looking about him, willing the fields to give up their secrets.

"Now what?" Gwen sighed. "They could be anywhere."

Ianto walked to the hedge and looked over. There was a quarry nearby, a great scar on the landscape. The peaceful pastoral scene of trees and fields belied the turmoil within him. He felt inadequate to the task of locating his team mates. How? Where the hell should he start? He checked the SUV but there were no keys in the ignition. Ianto flicked switches and the power whined as the monitors flickered to life. Ianto jumped in and proceeded to log on with his password and encryption codes, bringing Owen's screen up in no time flat. Interestingly there was a document still open on it, marked "disappearances". "What have we got here…?" Ianto scanned the document and his eyebrows rose as he read the archive list.

The thrumming of rotor blades beating the air reached their ears as the police helicopter overflew their position and turned in for another sweep. Mountain Rescue had also turned out, but they were being held back by police. Ianto had no idea what the team had run into but he was fairly sure this was not going to be good.

"If I find they're out collecting butterflies I'm putting them on decaff for six months…" Ianto muttered. "I'll confiscate Owen's coffee machine…" He was worried sick by the time he had gone through the documents listing disappearances around the area. The trail had all lead back to this remote area in the Brecons. But why had they come all the way out here?

A police sergeant approached and drew Gwen away to tell her something. Ianto watched her nod and frown and accept a bit of paper from him. She read it, then asked something in return. She nodded at the reply then made her way back to where Ianto and Andy were standing by the SUV.

"That was a message from Bryn, about the phone trace. The call was made from a mobile number." She handed Ianto the piece of paper. "Recognize it?"

"But that's Suzie's mobile," Ianto said. "What the hell could she have said to call them all out like that?"

"Doctor?" It was Andy. "Just had a call in from the helicopter. They've spotted someone about half a mile away."

It was Tosh. She was almost unconscious, bordering hypothermic, blood running down her arm from a nasty gash. She fought them as they tried to help, making no sense as Ianto tried to see to her injuries. The mountain rescue team helped strap her to a stretcher and they prepared to carry her down off the moors but she grabbed wildly onto Ianto's arm as they moved her.

"Ianto… please… Suzie… don't trust…" her eyes were wild.

"It's okay, Tosh, you're safe now." Ianto kept his voice gentle. "You've got a concussion and you have to lie still. Can you tell us what happened?" Her head moved slightly within the blocks and straps, and she screwed her eyes shut, terrified and disorientated.

Gwen touched Ianto on the arm. "Give me a minute with her… trust me?" She waited while they had moved off a little then bent to talk to Tosh. Ianto bounced on the balls of his feet, impatient and afraid. Jack might be okay but Suzie and Owen could still die…

Gwen patted Tosh's arm and allowed the men to carry Tosh away, then she went back to where Andy and Ianto stood in the lee of some scrubby trees. It was the only respite from the cold wind.

"She escaped from somewhere with stone buildings, but she couldn't remember any more. It couldn't be that far. It sounded like a farm. She cannot have run that far, not with those injuries. They're defensive wounds or I'm no copper," Gwen offered.

"So someone attacked her." Ianto was angry and worried. He looked at one of the mountain rescue men. "Any settlements around here that you know of? Barns? Buildings of any kind?"

"Not many," one of the men answered. "A few farms on the high country…."

"Ianto… this technology in the car, how does it work? Can you patch into satellite imagery?" Gwen had jumped into the car and pulled a screen toward her.

"I'm not sure… Here," Ianto leaned over and tapped a couple of keys to bring up the sensors. "This one…" he clicked over a button on the screen, "…brings up the satellite tracking system on all of the team's mobiles and comms devices… I'm not sure if we can patch into satellites themselves though."

"Ooo, that's interesting. How about this one? Here, the one which says 'heat sensor'?" She clicked on it and promptly put in map co-ordinates for their location. The image zoomed in dizzyingly fast and centered on their location, pinpointing their cluster of cars and people walking around. "Ooo. It's watching us…" Gwen said with glee as she got the camera to zoom out a little, seemingly a natural with the controls. "There we are…" she pointed to the dots on screen. "Let's see what this can do…" She zoomed out and scanned the area, then "Look at this! Here, Ianto…" She pointed to a cluster of red-bordered orange dots on the screen and zoomed in on them. "That's us, right near the road. But here," she trailed her finger over the screen. "That's a farm, about two miles away. Look at the dots. There's rather a lot of something making heat there. Now admittedly it might be animals but they're inside the place…and when you cross check it with your previous scanner readings," She paused. "The ones you said were linked to the team's comms, there, look…" Gwen had managed to pull two windows up on the screen at once. One showed the satellite map with clusters of heat readings about two miles to the north east, and the other showed the location of the team's phones, grouped together, too close for it not to be correct. The rest of their team had to be part of the larger cluster of orange dots.

"Okay, we need to get there, as soon as we can." Ianto called the senior officer over and outlined his plan. Gwen smiled. The officer got onto his radio and marshaled the troops. Very soon, they were moving out, driving the SUV over the rough terrain toward the cluster of small buildings.

Reviews welcome.

**Apologies again that it has taken so liong to update.**


	8. Countrycide part 2

**Disclaimer: Characters owned by RTD and the BBC. I don't own any of it, except maybe the idea for the story, etc. etc. etc., no infringement of copyright intended, no money being made, etc, etc. Any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.**

_**Countrycide: part 2 - this is short so I can get it updated. Will have the next bit up soon, promise.**_

Ianto, Gwen and PC Andy peered around the dry stone wall that bordered the complex of farm buildings about two miles north from the layby where the SUV had been located. The readings indicated that their colleagues were close, most probably being held in the farmhouse. As they watched, someone broke from the house and ran across the yard, looking back fearfully as she stumbled away. A shout from the door was followed by a large man brandishing a gun which he fired off at the fleeing figure.

"That's Suzie!" Ianto cried and before the others could stop him, he dashed out of cover and ran to her. He got off a shot toward the door as he ran and the assailant ducked back inside, giving Ianto enough time to reach Suzie and grab her, pushing her behind the relative safety of a stone-walled cow byre.

Gasping, she grabbed his lapel and gazed fearfully into his eyes. "Ianto, what are you doing here?"

"It's okay now, you're safe. We have the police following us..."

"You have to be quick, they're going to kill them..."

"Alright, it's alright, I need to get you out of here and then we'll rescue them, take it easy..."

"No, that'll be too late! Jack can survive this but Owen can't! You have to DO something, now!"

"Alright, alright. Calm down and I'll see what we can do." Ianto was rapidly assessing her for damage, which was slight as far as he could tell without an in depth examination. She was bruised a little but that was superficial.

"Ianto..." Gwen was calling. He looked back toward where she and Andy were still crouched. They had been joined by a couple of armed police who were covering their position. Across the field he could see more advancing in small units. The gun shots had obviously hastened their approach. Suzie watched them with a smirk. "Oh, they'll get it now..." she muttered, more like herself. "They'll clean this mess up."

"Is it aliens?" Ianto asked her sharply.

"Aliens?" She seemed oddly puzzled.

"Yes, aliens. I want to know if I'll have to retcon the officers after this..."

"No, Ianto. It isn't aliens. Plain old people. They're cannibals. They've been harvesting for years..."

"Harvesting?"

"People, Ianto, people! All those disappearances, it was them. That's all it is, human beings. Nothing strange, nothing from out of this world, just plain old cannibals..."

There was a scuffle and Gwen arrived, dashing across to him, hunkering down beside them.

"How is she?"

"I'm fine... shaken... a little, but okay."

"Can't find anything," Ianto confirmed. "She'll live," he said with a smile.

"I thought I ought to come stay with her. You should go with the police. The team might need you."

"Thanks, Gwen. I... I'm not sure what's happening." He watched as the police teams advanced on the farm building. As the three colleagues watched, the police fired teargas and stormed the place, throwing percussion grenades in through the windows. There was a chaos of smashing glass, shouting, a scream and then eerie silence. One of the police came out and motioned the all-clear. Ianto touched Gwen on the shoulder and left at a run.

The place was a shambles inside. Ianto flashed his Torchwood ID and got through, seeing more body parts than he'd seen in a lifetime of A&E. He stumbled down the stairs to find Owen in a bloody huddle on the floor. His breathing was laboured and he was coughing blood. Two of the cannibalistic farmers were dead nearby and Jack was lying in a pool of congealing blood, his skulll bashed in. No matter that he knew Jack would return, it still sent a shudder through Ianto to see him like that. Mastering his emotions, Ianto ran a quick check on Owen, but there was little he could do except stabilise the man. He ordered the police to leave, which they did grudgingly, but he had no desire for them to see Jack's resurrection, assuming it came soon.

Leaving Jack to his own devices, Ianto threw open his bag and rummaged inside, searching for the necessary equipment. He first placed an IV line into Owen's elbow, securing a saline drip to make sure he was hydrated. Ianto then sedated the man so he could intubate him to make sure his airway stayed clear. He had done it countless times in A&E and he fell into the routines with the ease of long practice. Owen was still struggling to breath so Ianto suspected a pneumothorax, a punctured chest wall causing the lung within to deflate. For tense minutes, during which time Jack woke up noisily and messily with much groaning about his head, Ianto worked to place a chest drain and hopefully allow Owen's lung to re-inflate itself.

"Ianto? What happened?" Jack croaked.

"No idea, Jack. The police got here before I did. You were already dead. Owen is in a bad way but he's stablising. He needs airlifting to hospital as fast as possible though. I've done all I can."

"Did you find Tosh?"

"Already airlifted to hospital," Ianto reassured him. "She'll be okay... Why, what's wrong?"

"Where's Suzie?" Jack was scanning the room with a worried frown, his voice hard. He lurched to his feet.

"She's safe, Jack," Ianto hastened to reassure him. "Gwen is with her. She escaped before this place was assaulted by the rescue team..." Ianto frowned at the steely gaze in Jack's eyes. "She's okay. Nothing serious. Superficial bruising, that's all."

"I gotta go. Suzie's to blame for all this, Ianto. She's gone nuts, that damn glove..." and he was off and running, leaving a stunned doctor in his wake.

"Are you okay?"

Suzie glanced at Gwen and forced a smile. "Fine... a little shaken, but I'm okay." She laughed. "This is Torchwood," she explained, with a shrug. "This is pretty much normal. If you're going to stay the course, you have to be prepared to take this shit every damn day." Her voice was oddly sing-song, as if she were a little spaced out.

Gwen frowned a little, wondering what she had agreed to. She turned back toward the farmhouse as a figure appeared; Jack, looking a little wild with his ever-present coat flapping around him. She watched as he paused, glancing this way and that, as if searching for something. Gwen was about to raise a hand to catch his attention when she felt something cold press up beneath her jaw.

"Don't move," Suzie smiled at her, a not-altogether sane smile, her voice still sing-song and not a little creepy. She carried a curiously formed knife in her hand, its distinctive blade angled upward under Gwen's chin. It didn't take a leap of the imagination to realise that the blade was the same unusual shape as the one Ianto had moulded from the injuries of the murder victims. "Poor bloody idiots," she growled, casting a glance back toward the farmhouse. "Never knew I was using them. Now, escort me back to the SUV. He hasn't seen us yet, won't if we stay with this barn between us and the yard. Get a move on!" and she shoved Gwen into motion.

**(update soon, I promise...)**


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